Completed Animation

This is my completed animation. It took alot of work just for 11 seconds of movement - the majority was taken by the lip sync however a large portion of my time was getting the bounce right on the mans movement for 'alright'. I feel like it looks very fluid and the characters have some charisma to them. I tried to relate back to the principles of animation when creating this.
I also made a small environment for the characters to perform in, it is a typical office but helps the clip seem more real. I added various spotlights throughout the scene so the characters were visible but not too bright. I also used 3 camera shots so i could capture the reaction and speech for the third - as I felt this was important to do.
I am tremendously pleased with the lip sync, what the characters say is clear and can be lip read, I also feel like I managed to capture the expressions and emotions that I said I wanted to include back when I created the animatic.
One thing that I feel needs work are the hand movements, specifically the boss'. I didn't really have an idea for her hands other than for her to point at the work but I didn't want to make her appear frozen. I had her tapping on the desk subtly.
Overall I am very happy with how it turned out, I believe a large part of what made it so enjoyable to do was the clip I chose, as it showed different attitudes in such a short time frame. 

Camera viewpoints

Before I went on to complete my animation, I needed to think of my camera perspectives. Initially in my animatic I had the idea that there would be two camera viewpoints, one behind the man, and one behind the woman. This would allow me to capture the characters speaking and responding. In my research I found there were many types of camera angles.
Extreme long shot - Usually there to give a shot of the setting or a landscape.
Full shot - Complete shot of all of the characters - this would be used to show a group, maybe people walking on a pavement or in a car.
Long shot - This is just like extreme shot, but as it is more zoomed in it allows the viewer to gather more specific details of the setting.
Mid shot - This is a waist upwards shot of the character, faces are clear and their hand gestures are to, this is commonly used in conversations between characters.
Close up - A zoom on the characters face, it would be used for things like reactions, such as if a character was shocked the camera could cut to the close up and see the characters jaw drop.
Extreme close up - This is relevant for things like the zooming on characters eyes, if they were to widen.
These are the camera angles that are important to making an animated film effective. For my animation I decided to go with a full shot, however one character would have their back turned at each switch, up until the last where I would get a full shot of both their faces, from a side view. The views were also important as I read up on what kind of views there were.

I had a lot of enjoyment doing this, what I found was that a large amount of emotion was focused in the eyebrows. I would often change the position and shape of eyebrows and find that the face I just made turned into a completely different emotion. That's not to say that other facial features are not important as they are. The jaw and the eyelids are crucial to emotion and so are the lips. Below I go through what process I used to create the emotion on the face and often what I changed from the previous face.

Angry - inner side of the eyebrows are lowered., upper lip is raised on both sides.

Deceptive - Outer eyebrow is raised, jaw is lowered and outer lips are brought up to present a smile. 

Disgusted - Fairly similar to deceptive, except the jaw is brought up and the outer lips down.

Happy - eyebrows lifted and outer lips brought up. Jaw is brought down a bit.

Moody - I brought all of both eyebrows down for this, I also lowered the jawline and flattened the lips.

Sad - I raised the inner eyebrows and moved the pupils to look down, i also moved the eyelids down. 

Shocked - I dropped the jaw, raised the eyebrows and centered the pupils. I also lifted the upper eyelids to give that wide stare. 

Surprised - Pretty much identical to shocked, a small adjustment to the outer lips to bring them up into a smile turned the emotion to surprised. 

Falling off a chair - Analysis

It begins with a basic sitting pose, I was tilting slightly to one side as you can see my right arm is extending and my right shoulder is dropped. 

I then proceed to tilt so my left hip is raised and my right foot is off the floor. My left hand is higher and contrary to that my right is lower. 

This is the penultimate moment to where I lose my balance as I am still partially on the chair but my right leg is inwards and my left has come forwards. My hip is even higher at this point. 

This is where I am for the most part off the chair and falling. In order to brace myself for the impact of the floor my right leg bent and my right arm is in preparation to hit the floor. My left arm is still moving with my left side of my body at this point.

My body hits the floor and I basically remain the same shape as the previous image except flat on the floor, as you will notice both my feet remain the same and the only real differences are that within the upper body, more specifically with the arms.

Bouncing Ball

For this clip I made a ball bounce. I also included squash and stretch to make the ball look as though it had impact when it hit the ground. I did this by altering the attributes of the sphere in the attribute editor. This would involve me setting various differences to the values in the boxes. I moved the ball every 5 frames by 15 points in the editor to give it a unified look, so the ball would not rapidly change speed. I also adjusted the height of the bounce as it would not bounce as high the previous time.

Lip Sync

For the lip sync I had no video reference from the film that the dialogue was located. The camera cuts off the speaker so I had to video myself speaking the lines for 11 seconds. I took the important parts of the dialogue and froze the frames so I could get an idea as to what I would need to do in order to recreate this 11 second sound clip in an animated rig.

During the recording I noticed several things about how the lips presented speech, also how the jawline was affected and how to present this on a character.
The first thing to notice is how wide the lips become when pronouncing different syllables - think 'O'. An 'o' would bring the lips closer and lower the jaw line, as presented in the bottom picture (I tried outlining the lip shapes with a red marker). 'E' would elongate the lips and raise the jawline.
'M' would close the mouth, and elongate the lips whilst bringing them in slightly. Also at the point where my character says 'alright', I discovered that when acting it out one side of the mouth was raised and a cheesy grin followed. I felt if I naturally acted smug at this moment then I needed to present it in the animation.
After completing this 11 second video I came to the conclusion that lip syncing came down to a few things, one being the jaw dropping and raising, another being the length of the lips and the final thing being the shape of the lips upon certain letters.
However this did not mean other facial features are not vital to create a realistic animation - as you can notice from the shots I took eyebrows were massively important and eyes were critical to make the face appear alive.

The principles of animation

I got a chance to look at the 12 basic principles of animation. These points are followed by many animators and were set in the book 'the illusion of life - Disney animation'. This book was published in 1981 and written by Ollie Johnston and frank Thomas. Despite it being dated it applies timeless points to make animated characters appear real and fluid in their movements.
1. Squash and Stretch
This is considered the most important principle as when movement occurs, things do get stretched, what it also means is that things also get squashed in reaction to the stretching. The idea is that it gives a sense of weight to the asset. If a ball was to contract as it impacted the ground, it would need to stretch width-wise as the lower part would be squashed. I think of it as though if the item is pressed in then it would need to push out to react. It cannot just disappear.
2. Anticipation
This one is in the name, you create anticipation for the audience as though they could visualize the move before it happens, it adds to the realism as they expect it rather than just see it.
3. Staging
This one directs the audiences attention, its what they focus on and how the animator makes it so.
4. Straight ahead action - Pose to Pose
This applies to drawn animation more, but it is relevant still. Pose to pose is used a lot in computer animation and is used to maintain proportions. Straight ahead action is used for fluid movement
5. Follow through and overlapping action
This helps give the impression that the laws of physics exist within animation. Follow through represents the movement of body parts after a movement has been acted, as you do not just stop instantly after you wave your arm. Overlapping is the representation of speed, as certain parts of the body will move quicker than other parts.
6. Slow in and slow out
Just like overlapping action this is the movement of the body. This applies to the movement between poses, such as jumping/standing still.
7. Arcs
The majority of actions carried out by the body are done in a arched movement type. turning the head for instance is not usually a straight flat rotate, the person would usually arch their head to turn it or it would look un-natural.
8. Secondary action
This is basically background action, it alleviates some focus from the main character or asset meaning that the audience sees a second movement in the scene. It is key to note that they do not take away the focus from the main character but rather helps it.
9. Timing
Timing is fairly straightforward, it presents the amount of time it would take to for instance pull something towards you, the weight of the object would impact the time it took to pull it.
10. Exaggeration
This is used in cartoon animation mostly but does hold its place in realistic animation, usually movements are fast in frames and the eye struggles to register slight un natural movements. It is common in extreme poses such as the bending of the back.
11. Solid Drawing
This is the character and how they are drawn, they need to display their weight, anatomy and balance.
12. Appeal
This is important to characters, they must show likability - if that is the aim for the character or vice versa.

Storyboard and animatic

This is my animatic, I wanted it to show as many emotions as possible within around 20 frames.
I had a lot of enjoyment from creating this animatic. The two characters react with each-other well and I think my choice of viewpoints is good as it allows the viewer to see the reactions of the characters and their responses. 

The storyboard is the plan for the animation. This allowed me to envisage my animation step by step so I could get a feel for how things for look. Specifically with movement and emotions. This is only a short representation of the animatic in which I piece together the frames and include more to give the frames movement.