DV2900 Talking points - Lip syncing test

Today my tutor gave us a demo on how to lip sync in flash. I am also trying out the lip syncing process today myself.

I decided to follow a tutorial I mentioned in previous posts; Facial animation in flash (lip syncing) with Draw with Jazza on Youtube.

                                         (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3l3txgnf_A)

I am able to download the raw files to follow him in the tutorial.

Straight away he mention something that I wouldn't have thought about, and thats creating a layer just for cues, to help us separate the audio without actually separating it, to determine who will be speaking and where the camera will be; he says its just for the camera but I think this could be great when it comes to speaking as well.

While he is talking about doing the mouth movements on the character he mentions that it isn't just the mouth moving and changing, the cheeks and the chin move as well. He also goes on by saying move the eyes as well because this will help make it more natural in my opinion, we all blink and I think that it would make it better to have the eyes moving, he also says that with the pupils have the dart around not too much but short and sharp movements; this will help make it more natural as well, but only if you do it right make sure you know where the character is looking and who he/she is speaking too.

This tutorial and my tutor both recommended me to download keyframe caddy, to help us with the different mouth positions; and now I see why. It shows us how easy and efficient.  

With keyframe caddy all you have to do is click a graphic symbol and click load thumbnails and it loads all the frames in the graphic symbol, as shown below. 

After I finished the video and went through the raw files, I found out that the file is finished, but I have learnt a lot from the video itself. 

DV2900 Talking points - Idea change

Today I have finalised my idea; because of what my tutors said I changed it to make sure its friendly to all. I didn't want to re design the characters but i will have to re design one of them the Vietnamese one and that wont be a problem.

The Vietnamese girl will be changed into a girl wearing a hazmat suit because she is scared of germs, she will just mumble, not actually speaking but ill put subtitles on the bottom of the screen.

The Jamaican will become addicted to coffee, he is so addicted he cant stop shaking, this way i can still use the character design. 

The Irish man will become addicted to folding paper, like origami. I can still use his character design as well.

The presenter can stay the same as there isn't anything thats changed with this character. 

With these character designs i am not being rude and i wont have to worry about upsetting anyone. While i was thinking and the change to the Vietnamese girl, i had a thought that it would be best to subtitle the whole animation, we do have a deaf student but i also think that it would be good for other deaf people around the world, and i think it will help me practise this for now and my future projects.  

All I need to do now is finish up the script and re record.

DV2900 Talking points - Idea Presentation

Today I had to present my idea and designs to both my class and peers so I can get feedback on my work, a lot of tips was given to me. I personal found the idea good and so did my peers but my tutors thought i could be being racist and rude to certain people. The idea is to make stereotypical people in a support group; and as mention before I wanted to make it funny, I didn't want to be rude.
My tutor said to me that all I need to do is annoy one person about this idea. All my class mates didn't care as much about it and found it more funny then rude, which is how i felt but my tutors said that its not just the class i need to think about the college and the other students and staff; the college has to care about the equal opportunities and this could be classed as going against that. It also didn't help that the Jamaican is a drug addict and the Irish man is a Alcoholic and the Vietnamese girl is getting abused by her husband.

So my tutor gave me an idea to be able to change it make it more interesting and humorous. He said to me to give them all ridiculous addictions instead to make it more funny. He also said to take out the accents completely because then it doesn't sound like your mocking the accents, but honestly I think if i take them out then it will make it more boring and dull, the accents can make people laugh as it is and give the animation and different kind of flavour. The example my tutor gave me was to make one addicted to cake, this is the kind of idea that he meant, something different and funny, but I still will have to watch out because I don't want to do some real conditions that actually exist, or can be rude to disabled students.

This is a big bump in the development of my animation, but i think that its really a good thing because i dont want to come across rude, i want to create something humorous and friendly with everyone.

DV2900 Talking points - Pre Production - Recording

Today i went to record the voices for the animation and create the storyboards as well. The voice recording went very well, I had my four voice actors attend and performed to their best of their ability. The recording process was alright, straight away i had a problem, I booked the sound studio for recording yesterday, but today some one has decided not to check and put other students in there, so i had to go into a different room and hope for the best, and in the end the sound came out alright and there wasn't many people around.

I made sure that i done many takes of the different parts, just in case they messed up or didn't work well. This was the case, while recording there was a lot of mess ups so having more then one helped me to have a range. While shooting there was no problems.

After recording and creating the story i then created the storyboard for my animation.

I now have everything i need for the presentation on Monday, I'm happy to have all this design work because i can now get all the feedback i need to improve my idea.

DV2900 Talking Point - Pre Production - Recording Test

Today I need to start getting all my planning together because we have our first interm hand in, and a Idea presentation on Monday 18th.
The planning is going alright at the moment, as seen I have done a lot of research on the my idea and have started designing the characters. I need to have all the designing done, I need to create the remaining characters and have model sheets for all of them.  My main focus for this week is getting the voices recorded. This is the main part of the development of my animation, because the storyboard is around the speech itself. This is a very important part and probably the hardest part, this is because I need to get my voice actors together, find a good location to record the voices and the equipment to actually record the voices itself.
I had a chat with the technician to discuss what equipment she has that can help me record the voices and where I could doing the recording. She recommended to use a Marantz with Shotgun mics; with this equipment I can record the sound in a very good quality. The Shotgun mics are better for
I can do a test on the marantz to find out about the sound quality and if it picks up everyone. If i use the shotgun mics i can have better quality,  each marantz have two mics attached, i will need three or two , for the five voice actors i have, could two actors share one mic

Photo of the Marantz.

Photo of the Shotgun Mic.

 After I finished the test today, I feel really comfortable with the recording equipment. The test went really well, not just for me to learn about the recording equipment but also for my voice actors to get comfortable and to practice their lines. I was also able to test how many people we could have round one mic and how far the range is on the shotgun mics. There was a lot I had to remember while recording, the main thing was the levels of the voices, as you can see in the picture of the Marantz there's all the little dots; they light up with three colours green, orange and red, these determine how the loud the voice is and if its in the red its too close; with this in mind we ended up having to remember how far to be away from the mic and we had to adjust the levels with the circular switch next to the level meter (shown on the photo of the Marantz). During the testing I worked out that I would only need one Marantz and two shotgun mics, if I used more then one Marantz it would get confusing, with syncing the different parts of audio together and there maybe an echo on the other Marantz, having both the shotgun mics into one Marantz made it possible to record different parts but with the same consistency.

I was also able to use the sound studio for my test and I was able to book it for the actual recording tomorrow. I was told that the sound studio isn't sound proof but when I was doing my test I personally had no problems at all and only picked up the air con but that isn't a problem at all. 

Overall the test went really well, I became comfortable with what I needed to do and with the room, all the voice actors became comfortable with how it was going to be done.

DV2900 Talking points - Character development.

Today I spent the day creating my characters, I also changed around how many characters i have and what ones i have chosen. I have decided to have two men, one Jamaican and one Irish man, and i have changed the vietnamese guy to a girl instead. I changed the guy into a girl because I thought it would be a good range of genders. I also created the social worker for the support group, which i wanted to be voiced with a normal voice.

Here are the final designs

Jamaican character model sheet.

Jamaican character Face model sheet.

Irish character model sheet.

Irish character face model sheet.

Irish character design.

Social worker face model.

Social worker model sheet.

Vietnamese character model sheet.

Vietnamese character face model sheet.

These are all my designs of the characters i will be doing for my animation. I think that these model sheets are good and can help me when animating my characters.