Fight Sequence Animation
My fight animation sequence was developed to showcase my creative choices and animation talents.
Firstly, I made myself a storyboard to help organise camera shots, key character poses and provide myself a guide when animating.
When animating, I ensured to study reference fight scenes from anime and real life, and take personal acting reference footage to ensure my fight choreography looked realistic and appealing.
It was important to create clear, visually appealing fight scenes. Therefore this sequence was animated using multiple blocking, splining and polishing passes to effectively develop the animation.
Keyframe animating the character's hairs were challenging, to push poses and time secondary and overlapping actions. I experimented using cloth simulation on the hair joints to ease this process, however keyframe animation proved significantly more useful to control hair animation. This allowed for stronger and more dynamic hair key poses, better control over animation timing and geo clipping.
Softwares used: Maya, Unreal Engine, Adobe Premiere Pro
Rigs sourced: Azri rig, Shinobu Rig
Stylised Lip-syncing & Facial Animation
My lip-syncing & facial performance animation was created to showcase my keyframing facial performance talents and creative choices.
I wanted to convey a strong, stylised lip-syncing performance for Fred the Mummy (Thep Rig). To achieve this, I recorded reference footage of myself lip-syncing to the dialogue for animation reference, and exaggerated key lip-syncing poses by 'breaking the rig' to achieve desired mouth shapes. Lastly, I animated all facial elements together (cheeks, chin, eyes, eyelids, and eyebrows) in time with the mouth lip-syncing animation to produce a synchronised and fluid facial performance.
I additionally wanted to animate each character differently to convey contrasting character personalities. For example, Fred the Mummy's character is very energetic and dashing so I animated him with fluid and exaggerated body mechanics. meanwhile, Kim the Waitress (Waitress Rig) is very kind and relaxed so she was animated with less exaggerated poses and more realistic poses to match her personality.
Softwares used: Maya, Adobe Premiere Pro
Rigs sourced: Thep Rig, Waitress Rig