If you had a look at my first puppet lips-sync attempt, you may have been bothered by the very apparent sim-line between the skull and the replaceable jaws.
This line will be erased in post production using a software like Adobe After Effect (and not Adobe Premiere as I wrongly stated in my earlier post). After a many tutorials watching and few attemps, it looks like it is possible. I have not yet master the craft, but as a proof of concept, here is the identical video to the earlier post, with some post-production trick on the sim-line.
I could not wait to test my puppet in a bare-bone environment, for an extreme lips-sync close-up
I have made a very quick mouth replacement run on one of the famous line of Manny which I had already lips-synced in an earlier post with some digital image of the model. Now it's getting closer to the real thing, using (at last!) Dragon Frame.
The result, below, is, has, as expected, a lot of undesirable beginner's defects. The background light is flickering because my electricity is far from stable. I will fix this with a power stabilizer.
Manny's hood is "boiling" like crazy... as I replace the mouth piece, it is almost impossible not to touch/move the fabrics. I will need to reinforce this hood... I am thinking of strengthening its shape by putting some can metal in the inside. But I am overall happy with the ease of placing and replacing the magnetic jaws: It simply snap into place with little skills required on my part.
I am less concerned of the very visible sim line between the mouth piece and the skull... I think I should be able to erase this in post prod with something like Adobe Premiere (which I know nothing about!). If anyone is experienced in post prod of this type, please give me a shout in comments.
Last Post left Manny padded with moss and balsa wood and here he goes with his reaper cloth. After a bunch of trials and errors I finally settled for some black elastic fabric in order to minimize the "boiling": i.e. the undesirable move of the fabric from one shot to another. This elastic fabric is wrapping Manny's puppet and seem to be more or less stable.
I will probably need to pad it a little bit more with an additional thin layer of moss to stabilize some soft parts, such as the shoulders. The access to the replacement jaws is not as easy as I would like and I will need to loosen the hood to make it easier. But even with these last last trimming and adjustments, it feels like a big milestone has been reach: I have my first animation puppet (almost) ready for shots!
"But you're not alone! Every body here is just as dead as you!"
