SPLINE
Month: June 2025
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FACIAL EEPRESSION PART4
BLOCKING 2
In the second blocking, there were still some problems pointed out by the instructor.
In a head-turning action, the head and body rotate too quickly, with only 4 frames of time. This time can be appropriately extended.
When the character pronounces the DT sound, the teeth need to be closed.
The character’s movement range is still too large and needs to be reduced appropriately。
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FACIAL EEPRESSION PART3
The instructor gave me some suggestions on my blocking this week:
1. The range of body movement is too large, including the reference I took myself. So I re-photographed the reference and got the approval of my instructor.
2. Modifications to the face animation：
In this pose, the eyebrows do not form a perfect arc. Although it is a frowning expression, the corners of the mouth are still upturned. Lowering the corners of the mouth can better reflect the character’s emotions.
The best position of the eyeball is within the eye socket.
The range of facial rotation can be reduced appropriately, and the angle of the face needs to be changed so that the camera can capture the other half of the person’s face.
Finally, the eyebrows can be divided into three sections. The front section is close to the center of the eyebrows, followed by the middle section and the back section. Among the three sections, the front section has the largest movement range, followed by the middle section, and the back section has a very small movement range. This is what you need to pay attention to when making eyebrow animations.
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FACIAL EEPRESSION PART2
BLOCKING
Since I have done mouth animation before, I first created the mouth pose for each syllable, and then I animated the rest of the body.
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FACIAL EEPRESSION PART1
In this new section, we are asked to create a mouth animation. This section focuses solely on the movement of the character’s upper chest, highlighting their performance and emotional expression. We were tasked with selecting a piece of film dialogue and creating character expression animations that accurately reflect the emotion and context of the scene.
We are required to develop a plan that outlines the dialogue, the progression of the character’s expressions, and their personality traits. For my project, I chose Stan from the film Léon: The Professional, a character known for his neurotic and violent nature.
I chose this passage as my line：
This is a reference:
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BODY MECHANIC PART5
According to the advice given by my instructor, I changed the position of the camera and some poses, and then made the whole animation into a spline.
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BODY MECHANIC PART4
In this part, I continued to make changes to the blocking based on the advice given to me by my instructor.
First of all, in this pose, my idea was that because the character was hit by a punch, the character would produce a body distortion effect when retreating. But I still overlooked a very important factor, which is the beauty of each pose and the curvature of each joint.
In this pose, I accepted the advice given by my instructor, which was to make the character’s two arms wave involuntarily, so as to show that the character is trying hard to control his body shape after losing his center of gravity.
In this pose, the instructor emphasized that I could continue to increase the range of movement of my shoulders to make this pose full of tension.
In the last pose, the instructor made the same request, letting the character rush forward and directly cross the camera, which can also provide tension for the entire animation.
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PROJECT2 FINAL
For this work, this is my first attempt to use AI and 3D scanning to assist in video production, and it is also my first attempt to combine animation and real footage. This is an experimental short film that will open up a different path for my FMP. The tone of the whole film is lost and helpless, but it also reflects my true emotions as a director very well, and this short film can resonate with me very well. However, as a short film that brings in the director’s personal emotions, I think it is more difficult to resonate with the audience, especially when adding real footage, which will make the audience have different emotions, which may lead to mixed reviews of the short film.
In fact, when I was making the last shot, I made two different endings. The first one is as shown in the finished film, the protagonist leaves the camera and focuses on the leftover apple. But the other ending is that when the protagonist leaves, the protagonist takes the leftover apple. The meanings of these two endings are completely different. The first one is that the protagonist has not come out of the mental torture. Although the whole scene has become warm, the apple that symbolizes the protagonist’s rotten heart is still there. This also means that the protagonist only temporarily calmed his mental state with some self-comfort, but the root problem was not solved. When the protagonist took the apple, it meant that the protagonist solved his mental trauma. I used the first shot after thinking for a long time. This is probably also a presentation of my own spirit. I think it is difficult for a patient with mental illness not to rely on external forces to complete self-salvation.
This is another end:
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PROJECT2 PROGRESS PART10
In this part, I render all the existing materials and do the final editing and post-processing in Premiere Pro.
In the first and last shots, I tried to use different lens focuses. The first shot focused on the apple in the foreground, which made the whole picture full of uncertainty. In the last shot, I focused on the character in the back to focus on the emotional changes of the character.
I then removed the color from the real footage, darkened the brightness, and added some vintage film effects.
Regarding the soundtrack, I asked my good friend to help. We discussed the soundtrack for a long time. We determined the climax of the whole film. I explained to my friend the differences in time, space, and vision of all the shots.
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PROJECT2 PROGRESS PART9
I want to add the character’s background story to this short film, but it is difficult to explain the character’s background story within the limited time, so I plan to use photos as an object. My idea is to use photos hanging on the wall to show the protagonist’s past experiences. This will be an empty shot. However, due to time constraints, it is difficult for me to make different clothes for the character and different scenes in different photos, so I used AI.
I searched online and finally identified several AI software for generating pictures: ComfyUI, Leonardo AI, Bing Image Creator, Playground AI. However, in the subsequent production, I found that the common disadvantage of this AI software is that it is difficult to use your own characters to produce AI pictures, and it cannot accurately recognize my original character models.
Then I looked up relevant information and locked on the AI software Astria, which can convert the character images you upload into AI character models, and then use the unique AI character models for AI drawing.
But I still found a serious problem here, that is, if you want to add other characters besides the protagonist to this picture, then the other characters will also become the appearance of the protagonist. I will solve this problem in the future.