Wednesday 2nd October 2013

Animate a change of facial expression

For this animation we needed to animate a change of facial expression.

We were shown a couple of tutorials for this exercise as well as a demonstration on creating facial expressions. The tutorials we were shown were for blinking and rigging an eye in Flash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNWQRZ_FC0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMKyQi8GDCo

We could use either frame by frame animation or tweens for this exercise and I went for frame by frame animation.I chose to do frame by frame animation as I felt I would have more control over creating the expressions. Before I started my animation I searched via Google images for an image of various facial expressions as references for the expressions I decide to use. I decided to use the expressions grumpy and shocked for my animation.

The face I made is extremely basic however it has the features needed to make the facial expressions, so I went ahead and animated it. The first expression I made was a grumpy expression. Since I was using frame by frame animation I was using the onion skin tool on each frame so that I don't draw in a completely different area to where I am supposed to. I animated the eyebrows, eyes and mouth to replicate that of the image I was using as a reference. After I animated it I then left it as a still for a few frames to then start animating the shocked face. Again I used the image as a reference whilst making the animation. Then to finish the animation I made the face to return to its original expression.

I feel I should have done a better job on this animation as it's very basic and the expressions could be improved to look a lot better. So I may redo this exercise at a later date and also include a few more expressions.