Facial animation - WIP - 06

Facial animation - WIP - 06, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Added some grass but I'm not sure about the sun.

More animation done. Started to make the actions a bit more snappy. One problem I had was the antennas are parented to the head which is good for most of the animation but for some parts I want the eyes to stay still whilst the body moves, then have them catch up. I should have rigged it so there is a parent blend like I did with the dragon fly so ill add this to the rig after. To get around this I made a locator, snapped it to the eye controls on the frame they stop, then every frame after that I snapped the eye controls to the locator, this way I was able to have the body move with keeping the eyes fixed which worked out well :D

Also added some more lip-sync so not much left to do in that area.

One tip is to set the keys for the lip sync where you hear the sound so you can get the correct timings, then move all the lip sync keys back 1 frame and this make it look more natural. I suppose this is a sort of anticipation, when you talk you move you're mouth into the position, then you make the sound, you don't do them at the same time.

Another tip is to set the interpolation of the lip sync animation f-curves to linear, this is because the mouth moves very fast, so you need to move between the poses quickly. Also biologically, facial muscles are small and tight and don't jiggle like other muscles, so removing the ease in and out makes it look more natural as well.