Nicole's 3D Computer Animation blog

Month: June 2025

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Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation Techniques Sessions with George

Week 7 Continue adjust blocking facial expression animation

This week, I continued refining my blocking.

I need to revise the first pose, as the line of the character’s shoulders is really important—it helps create a strong silhouette and adds contrast to the overall shape. To improve the pose, I plan to tilt the shoulders more, which should enhance the visual appeal and make the character’s stance feel more dynamic.

Another thing to pay attention to is the character’s teeth. Sometimes, it’s better to either show the teeth clearly or not at all—anything in between can look unintentional or awkward. When the teeth are visible, it’s important to be mindful of their position and angle. Adjusting the rotation can help make the teeth look more natural and properly integrated into the expression.

The shape of the mouth is also really important. Typically, the corners of the mouth have sharper edges, and the overall mouth shape tends to form a trapezoid—either slanting upward or downward. It’s crucial to adjust the direction of the mouth corners based on the character’s emotion, as it greatly affects the clarity and believability of the expression.

Here, I wanted to make the character feel more alive, so I added a hold in the animation.

I rotated his nose and chin, creating the effect that they haven’t quite caught up yet and are lingering in the previous position. I think this little pause may help convey a more believable and nuanced movement.

Categories
Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation Techniques Sessions with George

Week 6 blocking – facial performance animation

This week, I completed the facial blocking, and during class, I got some valuable feedback from George. His comments helped me see a few areas where I could push the expressions further and make the performance more readable.

At first, I was trying to closely match the reference pose, so I went with a crossed-arm position. However, since the character model has a larger chest, this caused noticeable clipping between the arms and the chest when the arms were tightly crossed. George pointed out that I didn’t need to make things harder for myself from the start and suggested a more relaxed approach. Instead of forcing the reference pose, he recommended letting the arms hang naturally. This not only avoids the model’s limitations but also frees up more time and energy for me to focus on the facial animation, which is a more important part of the performance.

The second issue I ran into was with the eyebrows—they weren’t forming a continuous line, but were instead separated, with a visible gap in the middle. This breaks the visual flow across the character’s face, making the expression feel less connected. Ideally, the eyebrows should form a clear guiding line that draws attention and supports the emotion. The mouth can then serve as a contrasting line in the opposite direction, creating a sense of visual balance and contrast in the facial expression.

Another issue is that the inhale before the character sighs isn’t very noticeable. To make the breathing action clearer, I could exaggerate the movement of the jaw a bit more. A slightly larger jaw drop would help sell the sense of the character taking in a breath, making the sigh feel more natural and expressive.

I encountered some major issues with the character’s body movement in my animation. The motion was too exaggerated, especially in the lower body. I had animated the character’s lower half shifting during dialogue, but in both the reference and real-life observations, people tend to keep their lower body relatively still while speaking, with most of the rotation happening in the upper body. So, I decided to remove the lower body movement entirely.

When re-keying the character’s turning animation, George showed us how to use spline mode even during the blocking phase. I found this technique really helpful—switching between stepped and spline made it much easier to spot overly large movements or unnatural transitions early on.

Categories
Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation Techniques Sessions with George

Week 5 Continue adjust animation and prepare for facial performance animation

Refining the anticipation movement

This week, I refined the character’s anticipation movement before she jumps. She now holds a moving pose for nearly three frames, creating a subtle moving hold. During this hold, her legs press down slightly to avoid the pose looking frozen or static.

Since this moment is very brief, I aimed to introduce just a hint of motion in her legs. If the movement was too exaggerated, it would feel unnatural or distracting. So I kept the motion subtle, just enough to give it life without breaking the flow of animation.

Following George’s feedback, he pointed out that my character’s legs were pressing down too much during the anticipation pose—so much so that they even made contact with the mat. He suggested reducing the range of this motion to keep it more grounded and believable.

The goal is to avoid movements that a real human body couldn’t realistically perform. Taking his advice, I adjusted the leg motion to be more subtle and natural, maintaining the energy of the anticipation without breaking the realism of the animation.

Prepare facial expression animation:

I found a line on the website George recommended. The context is that Legolas says to an orc who’s about to be killed: “I would not antagonize her.”https://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=296
It means: “If it were me, I wouldn’t provoke her.” (She’s too powerful—provoking her wouldn’t be a wise choice.)

video clips: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3143512a-dd25-4d78-b41d-d69a13928c55

However, the original scene doesn’t carry much emotional variation—it feels like it stays within a single emotional tone throughout. So I wanted to imagine a new scenario to explore a broader range of emotional expression for my animation.

I set a scene where the protagonist hears others talking about “her,” and he falls into regret, guilt, and sadness. If he hadn’t been so impulsive back then, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up like this (maybe she died or is seriously injured and unconscious).

Then the protagonist says to those people: “I would not antagonize her.”
There’s some anger toward himself, and also sadness, guilt, and uneasiness. He doesn’t know how to face the others’ eyes.

I recorded some videos and tried really hard to recreate that emotion, but they all looked kind of strange. Then George suggested that when I record, I shouldn’t look directly into the camera lens. Instead, I should look somewhere else, because the character isn’t talking to the camera—they’re talking to someone who’s standing in a different position.

So I re-recorded the video and picked one take. I chose two main poses: at the beginning, the character is standing and facing away. When he hears the conversation, he turns and looks in that direction, then says the line.