so I’m animating a character and its kinda hard to concentrate because while she is doing all these poses and stuff, her expression stays blank and its throwing me off a ton. my current process looks like make key poses - ease together - animate facial expressions. so i was wondering what process you guys use for animating and if i should change mine?
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Typically, animation is done in stages- the blocking pass, several clean up passes, and refinement passes. You would add the broad facial expressions early on and gradually add more detail as you go. Here’s two great examples:
https://twitter.com/rickyframes/status/1569034837612175362?s=20&t=GHN7nymhISjMSkKHMgfhVg
https://twitter.com/michaelCuevas27/status/1566485615327121409?s=20&t=GHN7nymhISjMSkKHMgfhVg
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Are the facial expressions a “key” part of your story telling? If so I would animate them as well. I have never seen two animators that have the same workflow. There are so many ways to animate. Here is a sample https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMTet6nd_iM . I think it will boil down to your style and what you like to do. I like to animate all phonemes first. Switch to pose to pose and add facial expressions and work on timing. Then use some reference motion to figure out the breakdowns with straight ahead. It varies all over the place. The reason I do words, expressions, and speech first is that way the character isn’t moving all over the place when I check the dialogue. However, it does require a lot of layering further on if I have close up shots. If you ever find yourself getting them right the first time, you are in a class by yourself. Don’t worry about it. Do what feels natural to you and judge your results, not how you get there. Good luck and post your finished product.
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