Bricks in Motion
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Hey, it seems such a simple thing, but I find it incredibly difficult to animate dialogue convincingly. The best attempt I have would probably be on my awful short "Hyperchondriac" but it's not as good as some.
How do you go about matching animation to the recordings?
Never animate first. Always record, then animate! That is what you were talking about, right?
I know that's the order, I mean how can you animate to a recording? I have seen films where the figure will move his hands slightly and smoothly along with the speech, and then throwing its arms up for emphasis and the like. How can you work out the timing? Just keep taking frames and playing the line? Or is there a decent method?
I zoom in on the line in Audacity until I can see the timing down to a quarter of a second. Because I'm awkward and animate at 16 FPS, I know that one quarter = 4 frames, one half = 8 frames, etc, and using that I feel I can make the timing of the animation match well.
My videos are dialogue-heavy, and I wrote an entire chapter on the topic!
Here is the guide's URL. Download/print it at will:
https://app.box.com/s/lovv0zlxhe2z10stsjsm
The 8-page chapter "Effective Dialogue Animation" begins on page 31, and even has visual aids. I really hope it helps! LMK if so.
Some people use an X-Sheet, where you write down the the dialogue and then below that the number of frames it'll take to say each part of the line.
For example:
Hello, I'm George. | Nice to meet you!
30 25
If you want to have multiple arm movements during a line you'd split it up like so:
When I grow up, | I want to be a doctor!
20 30
And for emphasis, where a larger arm movement is is required:
This box is | HUGE!
15 15
To figure out how many frames are between each section, you have to find the number of seconds each section is, then multiply by the number of FPS you use. So if it took the actor one second to say "This box is", and you are animating at 15fps, there would be 15 frames during which the actor says the line.
Personally I would use these if I didn't have iStopmotion to animate.
Edit: It might help to put the number of frames from the beginning at the start of each section like this:
When I grow up, | I want to be a doctor. | Do you want a cheese stick? |
0 20 50 65
Last edited by jasper (August 22, 2015 (07:52am))
I have moved the discussion on preview and rendering issues in MonkeyJam to its own thread:
My videos are dialogue-heavy, and I wrote an entire chapter on the topic!
Here is the guide's URL. Download/print it at will:https://app.box.com/s/lovv0zlxhe2z10stsjsm
The 8-page chapter "Effective Dialogue Animation" begins on page 31, and even has visual aids. I really hope it helps! LMK if so.
Thank you for the awesome guid!
Some people use an X-Sheet, where you write down the the dialogue and then below that the number of frames it'll take to say each part of the line.
For example:
Hello, I'm George. | Nice to meet you!
30 25If you want to have multiple arm movements during a line you'd split it up like so:
When I grow up, | I want to be a doctor!
20 30And for emphasis, where a larger arm movement is is required:
This box is | HUGE!
15 15To figure out how many frames are between each section, you have to find the number of seconds each section is, then multiply by the number of FPS you use. So if it took the actor one second to say "This box is", and you are animating at 15fps, there would be 15 frames during which the actor says the line.
Personally I would use these if I didn't have iStopmotion to animate.
Edit: It might help to put the number of frames from the beginning at the start of each section like this:
When I grow up, | I want to be a doctor. | Do you want a cheese stick? |
0 20 50 65
I've never had this problem. I animate the minifigures talking by looking at the sound waves.
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