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How to Make Animated Films 172 Timing and the subtlety of mouth movement should complete the action in a plausible and convincing way. This is something not easily communicated with the written word, however. It is much more a process of trial and error until you get it the way you want it to work most e ectively. Facial Animation Now that you have created the correct body language of the piece through your correct drawing and timing of the key poses, you need to concentrate on the facial expressions of the character to better de ne the mood or emotion of the piece. Dialog 173 The pose and facial expression says everything! First, to loosen you up a bit, I would suggest that you put aside the dialog sequence for now and work on a quick new assignment — a bite and chew test. Bite and Chew Draw a medium close-up of your character, holding a candy bar in his or her hand. The start point of the bite and chew exercise. (Source: DigiPen student art by Laura Franke.) How to Make Animated Films 174 Now animate the character bringing the candy bar to his or her mouth, biting o a piece of it and broadly and enthusiastically chewing it. Finally, have the character swallow the chewed piece. Be sure to study yourself in a mirror chewing, to see how the mouth and jaw work. It is not just an up and down movement of the chin, as is often portrayed. Especially build a special snap action into the movement, as having pulled at the bar with the teeth, it suddenly comes away, ready for the chewing action. Look at the nature of the circular rotation of the jaw in relation to the head and get the sense of grinding that the teeth need to breakdown the candy in the mouth. Finally, have the character swallow and smile with enjoyment at the piece of candy he or she has just eaten! Remember to get as much tension on the pullback as possible, with anticipation forward before the backward movement. (Source: DigiPen student art by Laura Franke.) Get as full and round an action as possible with the chew. (Source: DigiPen student art by Laura Franke.) The gulp should always be a convincing swallowing action before the character returns to a normal position. (Source: DigiPen student art by Laura Franke.) Now you’ll know a lot more about facial distortion and using the anatomy of the face and head to achieve certain expressions and deformations. Dialog 175 Working with the Face Clearly, the main reason for producing the bite and chew animation is to give you a sense of how much the face distorts and how extended positioning of the jaw can a ect the features of the face. This is an extreme of most dialog positioning, of course, but it is an invaluable way for you to experience the speed, positioning, and timing involved in producing a major piece of facial animation. Anyway, with the bite and chew successfully created, you are now ready to return to the dialog challenge. Study Real Facial Emotion Watch a great actor on the screen deliver a line of powerful dialog and you will see a vast range of emotion communicated in quite small and subtle ways. Consider the look in the eyes, the nature and timing of a blink, a hint and duration of a smile (or scorn), and the general presence of happiness, sadness, anger, and humiliation in the expression. All these things communicate the mood or emotion underpinning the words that are being spoken. This is the heart of being a great dialog animator and why it is not just the mouth opening and closing in perfect sync with the soundtrack. It is also what makes the challenge of working with spoken dialog so exciting for the serious animator. Returning to the audio track, play it over and over again and listen to the subtle in ections contained in the words. You have painted the important key poses with your broadest brush so far, but now you have to work  ner and  ner to emphasize the more subtle qualities of what is being spoken. Listen behind the actual words for the shades and tones of emotion. The subtlety of this 3D-created talking Dale Chihuly action for the  lm Fire Gods reveals a surprising amount of subtlety of expression. (Source: Courtesy of Royal Winchester.) How to Make Animated Films 176 If you feel a word or phrase has a happy quality to it, then that is the facial expression you need to begin to work with. If you feel a hint of displeasure, disdain, or sarcasm is being expressed, then the facial expression for that word or phrase has to hint at this also. Whatever emotion that drives the dialog at any moment has to be captured in the face, and especially the eyes, which are the “ windows of the soul ” and what the audience will basically be looking at for the majority of the time. It is not easy to capture subtle expression in the face or eyes in animation, but you must try to do so because that is what constitutes great animated dialog, as opposed to just making the lips move. Check out the fabulous dialog work by Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson, or another of the nine “ old men ” of Disney animation such as Milt Kahl to see what this is all about. Again, I urge you to study the expressions of great actors as they deliver their lines, or even everyday people as they are emotionally driven. Quite often actors can communicate huge emotion with a minimum of expression. But a regular person,  red with anger or excitement, happiness or sorrow, can present expressions of emotion that are quite surprising at times. (Stop any video of a person speaking, midword or midsentence, and you will see what I am talking about!) It is truly the selection and replication of these powerful facial expressions that will take the emotion communicated through the dialog animation to the next level. Even the most simplistic of animation can demand attention and have impact on the audience if the dialog is animated well. (Source: Courtesy of Monte Michaelis.) This dark and disturbing ghost from my  lm, Endangered Species , reveals the power of animated imagery outside of the more conventional cartoon genre. Dialog 177 The Process of Facial Expression Technically, you should approach facial expression just as you approached the body language poses. Take from your mind the existence of the keys you have already selected for the key positions of the body. Here you are identifying expression keys that will have timings and numberings entirely of their own. The facial action will be connected to the pose key numbering in some way, of course, but quite often the face will express itself independently of what the body is doing. This should, therefore, be re ected in the facial animation and key numbering selection. As before, I always start by writing my action intentions in the left column, beside the audio breakdown column, and write in the two’s animation numbers, ready for the key positions to be marked. So, listen to the audio track over and over again, as you did before with the body pose selection, and indicate on the exposure sheet where you feel the facial keys for the key expressions might lie. You can circle them with a di erent color pencil if it helps. How to Make Animated Films 178 I can only repeat again that these should be entirely di erent frame numbers than the key body positions. So, be brave and astute in your selections, although it might be that you’re happy to use the existing body keys regardless. Little thumbnail sketches beside the breakdown column on the dope sheet assist in de ning the numbering of the keys. Make sure the key drawings express the strong emotion indicated in the track. Dialog 179 N o t e Three-dimensional animators will actually  nd this approach much easier than their 2D colleagues. Often model rigs for the body will be quite separate than facial rigs, and so it is far easier for 3D animators to work with both of these in isolation, especially when trying and retrying options between the two. Two-dimensional animators unfortunately have to redraw entirely everything they do, unless they draw the face on a separate level. Lip Synching Finally, now that all the visually explorative and expressive work is complete, the actual lip synching can at last be attempted. I think you will now appreciate that dialog animation is just not a question of simply opening and closing the mouth on a frame-by-frame basis in relation to the sounds being heard. This noted, it is now time to do just that! I used this illustration in Animation from Pencils to Pixels to emphasize the range of choice an animator has in selecting even the most basic and generic of mouth shapes. Much thinking has to now go toward the shape of the mouth, the size of the mouth’s opening, and its overall relationship to the expression and shape maintained by the face at any moment in time. Consequently, consider these things very carefully as you draw the mouth positions. Following are a few golden rules you should be aware of when attempting the lip sync interpretation. Vowel Sounds Vowel sounds are the peg on which all other dialog lip synching hangs. If you successfully hit all the vowel sounds on sync, then whatever you do for the consonants will pretty much work  ne. Vowel sounds — a, e, i, o, and u How to Make Animated Films 180 sounds — are the ones that have to have open-mouthed positions of some kind to emphasize them precisely. The outer, open-mouth positions will be the most powerful tool animators have in emphasizing the major impact points of any dialog. The  gure shows just generic shapes, of course, to give you an idea of the broad di erences between them. However, the  nal (and more correct) shape of the open mouth on the vowel sounds will vary from sound to sound, emotion to emotion, mood to mood, and delivery to delivery, all totally dependent on the nature of the words being expressed. Mouth shapes will also be very dependent on the anatomical nature of the character design you are working with! Two contrasting mouth shapes that communicate two entirely di erent emotions. T I P Animators of dialog cannot work without a mirror to guide them. Consequently, place a mirror in front of your desk, mouth the words as closely to the expression contained in the audio track as you can, observe the shapes that your own mouth makes, then adapt these shapes in your drawings to re ect the design of the character you are working with. Dialog 181 A dialog mirror only needs to be large enough to show the mouth shapes you used when mimicking a particular audio track. Full-length mirrors, however, are necessary for observing full-body poses and postures. Frame Anticipation As we have already discussed, anticipating major audio emphasis points on a frame-by-frame basis gives much more punch and authority to the action. Therefore, in highlighting especially the vowel sounds of the dialog track, you will make the lip sync all the more convincing. Again trial and error will enable you to arrive at the perfect solution for your style of animation, but I usually work two to four frames ahead of the actual sound sync point and get good results. Illustrating the need for key poses and even open-mouth positions to anticipate the actual vowel sounds being expressed. [...]... overlapping action mean to the improvement of your characters’ movements Lastly, you demonstrated your knowledge of making a character talk, and hopefully how to make that character speak well with personality and emotion Now, the final piece of the puzzle is to bring it all together in a way that demonstrates your skills as a fully competent animator However, before 1 95 How to Make Animated Films you do that,... 191 How to Make Animated Films Lastly, we might return to our wide two-shot to reveal the conclusion of the scene, which in this case we have to actually handle in two storyboard shots Again, this silhouettes through body language and full-figure action the culmination of our story Being a wide shot we don’t necessarily have to focus specifically on subtle and complex facial work, but we do have to make. .. Before I commit to my final mouth positions, I draw them in very lightly at first, then test them to make sure all works well before strengthening the mouth lines 183 How to Make Animated Films Some animators are natural dialog people Others are not Some find it quite natural to hit the right blend of movement and expression from the get-go Others (like myself ) have to work really hard to get it right!... occurring between them, what needs to be communicated is much more than the actual words being said So pay great attention to their body language and to the expressions they share one to another Always look to the composition you choose to highlight the kind of mood you are looking for with the scene and the relationship between the two talking characters 1 85 How to Make Animated Films Also, remember that with... able to replicate the subtlety and sensitivity of great stage or film actors, it should never stop animators from studying their techniques and applying them to their animation work to raise the game of animation’s capabilities 192 Dialog It has often been said that an animator is a frustrated actor at heart, and thus it should always be! Similarly, animators should at all times be encouraged to act.. .How to Make Animated Films With major sound sync points, such as coughs, sneezes, and explosive laughter, I have known animators who anticipate the major impact points by anything from 8 to 14 frames Then again, you will have to arrive at your own perfect anticipation formula by trying and seeing what works best for you Tongue Action Don’t forget the valuable addition that selective tongue animation... stagger action 197 How to Make Animated Films Here I have chosen four slowing-in in-betweens, from 1 to 11 on odd numbers, but you can make as many in-betweens as you like The less you use, the more violent and sudden the action will appear, and the more you use, the longer and more cushioned the action will become The same comments here apply to the last figure, but just remember to make the same number... this illustration is the fact that, at the end, the finger touches the bell on the penultimate position then pushes a little harder on the last one, causing the finger to bend a little 201 How to Make Animated Films Even when the button is pushed it is not just a straight, mechanical pullback to the original character position This movement needs to be equally fluid, logical, and elegant This can again... them to see, you will have succeeded in the staging and composition Remember always: Every animator needs to silhouette their animation well This means that they need to create clearly defined outlines to their poses If all the elements of the body overlap or obscure each other, then the action is not so clear Take the following poses and silhouette them and the problem is apparent 189 How to Make Animated. .. body language poses to underpin them Pose test these and view in sync with the soundtrack Again staging, composition, and body language say so much! Next, work on the facial expressions to and from each character Then once again test the action with the soundtrack A pose without the mouth can express so much to the audience 187 How to Make Animated Films Finally, add the lip sync to both, even if the . them to make sure all works well before strengthening the mouth lines. How to Make Animated Films 184 Some animators are natural dialog people. Others are not. Some  nd it quite natural to. Courtesy of Royal Winchester.) How to Make Animated Films 176 If you feel a word or phrase has a happy quality to it, then that is the facial expression you need to begin to work with. If you feel. work  ne. Vowel sounds — a, e, i, o, and u How to Make Animated Films 180 sounds — are the ones that have to have open-mouthed positions of some kind to emphasize them precisely. The outer, open-mouth