Here we are. We have finally made it to the part of our animation journey where everything comes together. All of the principles, body mechanics and facial pose tests will come to bear as you create your first animated performance. Are you excited? I know I am!

The one-person dialog exercise is a very common practice and one that is directly applicable to production level animation. While it is not very common for an animated character to be talking themselves or to nothing in a scene individual shots are often comprised of a single character talking to another, but being the only one doing so.

How this works is you will be given 3 different audio clips taken from a movie or tv show character. All are taken out of context of the full story and frankly the hope is that you will take the clip as itself and create your own context for it. Typically the outcome is designed to be humorous or satirical though it can also be dramatic or introspective. It is up to you. You will choose 1 of the 3 audio clips as the dialog you will be animating your character to. The planning stage here is massively important as there is a lot of work required not only to animate the body, but also the face. Since your audio clip will have a completely different context than its original you cannot try and find the original clip for reference. So what do you do? Glad you asked. Let's look at the planning process for this exercise.

2 weeks ago we covered the principles of acting. In that discussion we explored the importance of exploring different options through video reference. It cannot be emphasized enough.
THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!
If you fail to do this simple process you are quite literally shooting yourself in the foot for the rest of this 4 week module. We are talking a level of pain with which you are not familiar... Seriously. Okay maybe not that kind of pain, but this stage of planning is so easy to do it would be stupid not to. Plus it is a required part of the assignment so there! :)

For those of you too lazy to click back to module 2 to look for that video link here it is again. Watch it. Do what it he does.

This video explores this process very well in my opinion. You are going to need to voice and act out the scene just like this guy. It's time for us all to get much more comfortable in front of the camera. Don't worry, its hard for all of us. You will survive :-)

Once you have a good spectrum of references choose the one you feel best represents what you would like to do for the shot and there you have your base video reference for your shot already figured out. Dang easy right?!?

Using your video reference you have captured you are now going to generate your offical reference thumbnails and timing notes that will dictate what main keys need to be set during the blocking phase. You definitely need a video player to allow you to go frame by frame. Quicktime is a great one, but there are others. Windows Media Player is not.

I would recommend creating 2 sets of timing notes. One for the body and one for the face. In reality they will go hand in hand and once we get to splining and polishing they will absolutely have to work together, but what we are planning for here is blocking, so let's keep it as simple as we can for as long as we can right? :)

Here is an idea of what your planning notes could look like for the body:

Body (Wizard character)

• Frame 1 - sitting at bar with elbow on table and drink in hand with head down
• Frame 24 - sets drink on counter (with audio beat of "never late")
• Frame 56 - points at bartender off camera
• Frame 82 - puts both hands on counter to push off
• Frame 90 - stands and pushes off counter
• Frame 110 - points to clock on wall
• Frame 140 - looking serious at bartender off camera to close out scene

While it isn't listed here it is important that you analyze the main beats of the face throughout the shot and what frames they land on. This is going to make the facial animation process a whole lot easier. Remember the visimes stuff! Don't go for every syllable or every phoneme. It'll drive you nuts and it won't help. Look for the large general sweeps of the face first then followed by main visimes hit points for this.

Once you have all of your notes you need to do some quick thumbnail sketches of the main key notes you described. Think of the overall pose of the character. Explore different ideas of readability and clarity. Again you can explore this stuff really easy when its sketches on paper before it becomes hard when you are posing in Maya.

Please download the collection of 6 audio clips (Dialog Collection 1) in the reference block on the right side of this page. Once unzipped please listen to each of the clips through until you decide on which one you would like to use. You will then complete the video reference exploration process as well as your timing notes and thumbnails as well. Do not turn in all of your different reference videos as I only want the final one you selected. Include all of the planning steps outlined on this page and will include the following to Assignment 3 on UNM Canvas by midnight next Saturday.

• Selected Audio Dialog File
• Final Video Reference Video (h264 mov format)
• Reference Thumbnails & Timing Notes