Began finding my way around the Morpheus rig, and created some characters using one of Josh Burton's tutorials. It was a good intro to the rig as he has you creating characters of different sexes, sizes and shapes. I then attempted to create some different strong poses using each character which gave me a feel for where all the handles are on the model.
I began to look for a variety of film clips to use in the main project for term 3, which is Character Animation and Visual Studies. In this term we will learn lip-syncing and introduce this element into character performance.
In our first session with Mike, he advised us to show the character thinking and to make it believable. To choose a piece of dialogue with a range of emotion, but advised us not to choose Jim Carrey but to choose something subtler. The key element Mike described was to make your animation piece different, to make it stand out from the crowd. I can fully imagine these studios get hundreds of showreels every day with over-the-top Jim Carrey-style animations, so I can fully understand the logic behind this.
With this in mind, I began to try and source a clip for my 20-second(ish) animation.
Withnail & I - 'Heart condition'
I think this clip would be perfect to use. It is about the right length, Withnail displays a variety of emotion from sadness, fear, humour etc in a short clip. Some fantastic facial expressions from Richard E. Grant would be very interesting to try and interpret and animate. The extract i'm thinking of using starts at 0:50 secs.
Bruce Lee - 'Finger pointing to the moon'
I think this would be a good clip to use as there is some visual humour involved with the slaps from Bruce Lee, some thinking on the part of the student which would be interesting to animate. The extract starts at 1:04 secs.
Bruce Campbell - 'Little Goody Two Shoes'
I really like this clip, it's got some wicked humour from 'bad' Ash, a puzzled look on 'good' Ash's face and some comedic violence which would be good to try and animate. The only thing I would worry about would be is if this is too far removed from the brief, which is more about facial expressions and lip-synching, rather than character action. I will get some feedback about these clips this week, so that will help me reach my decision on which clip to use. The extract I am considering using starts at 1:20 secs.
Donald Pleasance - 'Hey Lonnie, Get your ass away from there'
A clip from 'Halloween' where Dr Loomis scares some kids from behind a bush. It's the right length, and there's some comedy involved as Loomis looks pleased with himself after they've run away. Would be good to animate, but perhaps not enough emotion and facial expression.
Peter Sellers meets 'Wyoming' Bill Kelso
Scene from The Party where Hrundi meets Bill Kelso and has the privilege of having his hand crushed. Good length, acting, emotions and comedy. The section I'm looking to use begins at 1:35
Here is another clip from later in the film i could use:
