Wednesday 13 April 2016

Extended Design: Cy and Dusk's Phoneme Sheets

I wanted to create the phoneme library quite early in the process so that I would be able to take these mouths and use After Effects to create the lip sync. Using After Effects for the lip sync would make it easier to match the main movement from the photoshop file and import the mouths as an image on top, using tracking to keep the mouth in the same place as the character moves.

In order to create the mouths I used Preston Blair's phoneme examples as well as myself for reference to create a sheet for the main character, Cy and shadow, Dusk. Cy was quite difficult, as I had to remember to make the mouths in my own style so they were less realistic in comparison to Preston Blair's examples. After drawing the basic vowels, I added a few extra as to show emphasise that I would most likely add when lip syncing later on, for example making a smaller A/I mouth to work with a less exaggerated expression. I really enjoyed drawing these mouths as I got into the flow of considering how the character would generally talk. I also considered moving the characters chin as he talks which is something that I wanted to experiment with in After Effects and the puppet tool. I don't think my animation necessarily needs the chin to move but I personally think it would be a nice touch to the movement. 

After creating Cy's phoneme sheet it was quite easy creating Dusk's as it was far simpler with the shape of the face and I found it easier considering the extended mouths that would be needed for his speech. Such as 'S', this would need to be extended with how Dusk talks, more of a childlike and dark at times.  





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