This week I've been working on the lip-syncing of the audio of Good Omens mentioned in my last post. I kept the face pretty simple so I could just focus on the facial movements and get to animating it in Photoshop.
For my first proper attempt at lip-syncing I'm pretty happy with it, I think I maybe got carried away a little and put too many changes in expression in, but it's a good reference point for making the replacement pieces.
I've also attempted working in Maya and Blender. I struggled to follow the tutorial I found for Maya while in the studio on Thursday, but tried to work on Blender on my laptop this weekend which I found a little easier with their own tutorials on youtube. I ended up following a tutorial by 'Just Tis Arts' on youtube on how to begin shape a face in the software. This is where I got to within 2 or 3 hours:
The song choice is absolutely a hint at how I was feeling whilst working everything out.
It's going okay so far, I'm finding it all a bit hard to get to grips with and it's a lot harder working out the proportions of something that isn't actually there to hold and move around in person, the camera tools keep confusing me here and there. It's also hard to sculpt in real time but keep the rendering smooth, different artists solve this in different ways on different tutorials so I'll be trying some out once I finish this head build. Of course, modelling a face to be used in animation will be different too, as I'll have to think about the back of them that needs to connect with the rest of the head when it's needed for a frame or two.
The only other thing I've been doing is buying materials, the silicone, plaster, and sulphur-free clay are on their way from Bentley Advanced Materials, and I've ordered rigging, rigging points, armature wire and 12mm eyes from Animation Toolkit. I did have beads to use for the eyes, but now they've arrived they're a little smaller than I wanted them to be. My wig samples have arrived, however, and I've got my hands on some latex to try out on them, it's been a little harder to get some tacky wax but I'll just order some online. I'd like to get into the studio to do some very lowkey stop motion of the materials I have for the documentation part of the project, as I'm hoping to make my final film presenting what I've done similar to the style of video that Bill Making Stuff has on youtube, who I really enjoy watching.
[Examples of stop-motion arrangements and title indents in Bill Making Stuff videos]
I think my research question is going to be: 'What Methods of Puppet Head Making Are Most Expressive and Engaging?'
Comments