Category: Sessions with George

Body mechanics and facial acting animation show reel:

This week, I completed the final polish for my body mechanics and facial acting animation. I focused on refining the motion details and making subtle adjustments based on the feedback I received. In addition, I worked on setting up the lighting and did the final rendering to present the animation in its best possible quality.

Lighting part:

Three-point lighting

I used three-point lighting to light my character, rendered it in Maya, and then imported it into Nuke for some modifications and adjustments.

I used a warm key light to ensure that the main part of the character feels warm and has a sense of volume. I also added a cool fill light for the darker areas, so the shadows still have details, and the overall image has a nice contrast in color temperature, which prevents it from looking flat. To make the character stand out from the background, I placed a back light behind the character to outline the edges and make the character look more three-dimensional in the scene.

For the background, I didn’t just use a flat color or a simple texture. Instead, I considered that different animation moods require different background tones, so I adjust the background colors based on the emotion and story. In addition, I added a background light, which makes the center area of the background — right behind the character — slightly brighter than the surroundings. This naturally draws the audience’s attention to the character and also adds more depth to the image, so it doesn’t look too flat.

Post processing part:

Since I set the color space in Maya to Aces, it gives me a wider color gamut and more variations compared to the traditional srgb. However, most monitors can only display srgb colors, so I need to import the Aces exr files into Nuke and output them as srgb png files. In Nuke, I can also do some color grading to fine-tune the final look.

After getting the rendering result of the acting animation, I found that probably due to an issue with the model itself, the character’s eyes had some strange shapes, like small triangles. So I used roto in Nuke to mask them out and fix it.

Animation Reflection:

Looking back at this semester, I feel I’ve made real progress in understanding how to keep a character alive on screen even when they’re not moving much. One of the biggest things I learned is the importance of moving holds and copied pairs. At the start, I thought holding a pose was just about freezing the key frames for a few frames. But through practice, I realized that in 3D animation a still hold pose is don’t a good way cause everything looks stuck.

By learning to use copied pairs properly, I started to edit tiny adjustments during a hold, like a small leg press, a tiny weight shift, or a head tilt. It’s a simple trick but it makes the animation feel much more polished and believable.

However, I also found that adding movement to a very short hold is not as easy as just pushing keys around. If the timing isn’t planned well, those small movements can look shaky or unintentional. So this semester taught me that moving holds are not just a technical step; they force you to really understand timing and spacing at a deeper level.

Another area I improved on is planning the flow of actions. For example, my timing at the beginning often felt too evenly spread out or slightly off rhythm, sometimes too slow where it should be snappy. With feedback, I learned to think more in terms of slow-in, fast-out, slow-in, and to use anticipation and follow-through properly. It’s not just about making big poses but about how those poses connect smoothly.

For acting animation, I learnt not to stick too rigidly to the reference, especially when the character model has its own limitations. Like I struggled with the crossed arm pose at first because of the character’s chest is big so the arms will clip through the chest. George’s feedback helped me realize that it’s okay to adapt the pose to fit the model better. By letting the arms hang naturally, I avoided unnecessary problems and freed up more time to polish the facial animation, which often has more impact on the final performance.

Refining facial expressions also taught me a lot. Before, I actually didn’t pay much attention to how important the lines of the eyebrows and mouth shapes are for guiding the viewer’s gaze and strengthening the emotion. Now, I will pay more attention to making the eyebrows form a clean, continuous curve, and the corners of the mouth should have a clear direction and shape. Additionally, details like whether the teeth are shown, how much they are shown, and whether the angle is natural—these small details actually have a big impact on the naturalness of the expression.

I previously struggled with body movement during dialogue. I tended to animate the whole body shifting, but real people usually keep their lower body relatively stable. By focusing more on the shoulders and upper torso movements,

This semester, George also taught us the technique of using spline for blocking. It helped me spot unnatural transitions earlier and quickly block out the character’s body rotations in a easy way.

This week, I received valuable feedback from George. He pointed out that the rhythm of my animation could be improved by refining the timing and using more moving holds. Following the same principles of motion I’ve been practicing, I focused on letting the character’s movement ease in and out — starting slow, speeding up, and then slowing down again. To achieve this, I placed more keyframes around the main poses and kept fewer in-betweens, so that the action flows clearly from pose to pose.

After edited:

In this week, I convert my blocking to spline:

When I switched the animation to spline mode, I ran into some issues. I noticed that the character’s movements were too large and too fast, so I had to remove some keyframes. Otherwise, the character looked hyperactive—shaking back and forth while talking.

I did my best to adjust those key frames, but that led to a new problem: after reducing the rotation in the waist, the poses of the head and neck changed unexpectedly. Because of this, I had to go back and tweak each pose again to make sure everything stays accurate and flows smoothly.

I realized that I included too many expression changes during the blocking phase, which made the character’s face look overly busy. I’m hoping to get some feedback from George in this week’s review session to help me address the facial animation issues. When all the facial features are moving at once, it becomes hard to find a clear visual focal point. I think I should reduce some of the key frames for the eyebrows and mouth to create a stronger, more readable expression.

This week, I continued refining my blocking.

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.

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.

In this shot, George suggested that I redistribute the timing of each action, so the overall animation follows a slow-in, fast-out, slow-in principle.

Currently, my timing is more like slow-slow-fast-slow. Before the character stretches her leg toward the body, I added a preparation pose to build up energy, but George suggested removing it because it feels a bit awkward.

He also recommended speeding up the actions after the character lands and as she stands up, as well as making the following step forward quicker.

So I made some adjustments, but I noticed there are still some issues. For example, when the character is preparing to jump, I had her hold the pose completely still for three frames, but this made the movement feel a bit stiff. If I try to add a slight movement during those three frames, it ends up looking twitchy because the hold is so short.

This week, I received feedback from George, made some changes to the key poses, and deepened my understanding of the animation.

It’s clear that the character’s foot poses need significant adjustments. As the end point of the limbs, the feet tend to have a slight delay at the beginning and during the movement — they don’t move exactly in sync with the legs or on the same level.

Here’s my spline:

Moving Holds

Moving Hold means that when a character is holding a pose, they shouldn’t be completely still — there needs to be some slight movement. Even something as subtle as breathing, a small head tilt, or a gentle body shift can make the character feel more alive. If a character stays perfectly frozen for a few frames, it immediately gives off a “mannequin” vibe, especially in 3D animation where complete stillness feels unnatural. Compared to 2D, where we can use line wiggles or stylized shaking to fake subtle movement, in 3D we really have to animate those micro-movements by hand.

My personal understanding is: don’t let your character die on screen. Even just a few frames of subtle “fake movement” can add tension and realism to the shot.

Copied Pairs

Copied Pairs are a specific technique used to create moving holds. The process is actually pretty straightforward — you take your key pose and duplicate it, then move the duplicated keys a few frames forward on the timeline. This creates a pair of identical keyframes that hold the pose for a bit.

At first it might seem like a lazy shortcut, but in practice, you can slightly adjust the in-between to add a soft transition — like the character shifting weight, breathing, or gently swaying. It creates a subtle sense of motion within a hold.

I see this as a way to refine your blocking — beyond just having key poses and breakdowns, you’re adding mini-transitions that give your animation more depth and rhythm.

This is my attempt to moving holds and copy pairs:

I added a pause to the pose where the character opens her arms — I felt like she was building up energy for the next sequence of movements, kind of like a gymnast preparing for a routine. Then I copied and pasted the keyframes and extended their duration. In the spline phase, I adjusted the curves to give her a slight sense of motion, so it feels like she’s subtly shifting, not completely still.

BREAKDOWNS & Arcs

During blocking, it’s important to pay attention to the movement of the hands, limbs, and the COG — making sure their motion follows arcs instead of straight lines.

My blocking: