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.