Flash WorkshopTo intorduce us all to Flash, we were all set some simple exercises to do involving animating shapes and incorporating slow ins and slow outs into motion tweens. Below is a very basic walk cycle that I created during the workshop. I found it extremely difficult to create a good outcome as I am not very used to using a graphics tablet to draw directly into Flash and walk cycles is an aspect of animation that I need to work a lot on to improve.
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After doing some exercises in Flash to learn the basic tools and techniques. We were then given a dialogue between two people and drew two basic characters to create the lip sync on. Here is my attempt... |
Thumbnail Storyboards
For the lip sync exercise I am working with Steph whose character is a man called Archie. We first discussed some possible narratives that would work well combining our two characters and then each drew initial thumbnail storyboards.
This is the storyboard that I drew, trying to use various camera shots. However, I think it would last much too long, but it's difficult to make it shorter.
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This is Steph's first storyboard which we both preferred becuase the narrative is amusing and much shorter and there are some more interesting camera angles. Therefore we decided to base our final storyboard on this one and add some parts from my storyboard.
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ResearchBefore attempting to do this lip sync in Flash, I want to do some more research and preparatory work into lip sync and different types of mouth shapes and sounds. I firstly found some already existing lip sync guides which has helped to show me the shapes I need to be using and looking out for.
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Reference MaterialI have now filmed myself saying what Wood-Wood says in the lip sync animation and taken stills of my mouth as I'm pronouncing the different words. From these stills I'll be able to see the different mouth shapes that I need to draw for Wood-Wood.
Similar to the lip sync guides that I found, I have tried to indicate under each image the sound that would be produced with this mouth shape. |
Whilst referring to the stills, I tried to draw out all the mouth shapes that I would need for Wood-Wood. As the design for the character is simple, I found it easier than expected to draw out the mouth shapes because Wood-Wood has no tongue or teeth. This allowed me to focus just on the shape of the mouth more than anything else. I then used these to help me draw the mouth shapes in Flash.
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Background
Here is the original plan for the background that I drew out using perspective lines as we didn't want to use a straight on background. I then imported this into photoshop but had a lot of difficulty drawing the background and colouring it in. Therefore I drew the bench and added a wood texture to it and then Steph completed the rest of the background.