Manny's job interview

It's time for Casting Interview!

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.

Animation test: Lip Sync test

Testing my new (still virtual) replacement mouth set on original audio... The Sync work was done under Dragonframe and the video was then built from still image using VirtualDub (a nice little free software).

Puppet Making : Mouth replacement set (trial 2)

A few weeks ago, I have presented on this blog a mouth replacement set for Manny made by hand in Sculpey clay. But I was still not very happy with the outcome: the match between the lower jaw and the upper skull was approximate, leaving big gaps which will prove to be hard to conceal.

At the same time, I was intrigued by Celso's skull made by Chay in a 3D software that he recommended to me: zBrush.

Unlike a conventional 3D authoring software, zBrush lets you sculpt intuitively shapes without worrying about meshes of polygon : it's a bit like using some digital clay.

I decided to give a try on a trial version, starting from Tom Beg's original 3D model skull for Manny.

As you can see, I had a lot of fun with it. It took a little while to get through the beginner's learning curve, but once you get used to a few (among many) brushes it gets really intuitive.

The advantage of this method, would be to be able to make a very clean, precise, and consistent cut between the skull and the mouth set, and get the pieces sent to a 3D printer. The fit will be almost perfect, and the remaining contact line will be more easy to conceal in post-production.

Now it gets really tempting to have a set of upper skull (i.e. with different position of eyebrows), to de-multiply the possibilities facial expression. But I am getting ahead of myself... as my father always taught me: "le mieux est l'enemi du bien".

Animation: equipment test1

A quick and dirty job to test how my camera is behaving with DragonFrame. I don't have any lights on the set yet so the image quality is pretty grainy (long 2 seconds exposure shots with ISO settings maxed out). 

Besides, I think I managed to cram all the "not to do's" in those 4 seconds: 

* Bad focus 

* Flickers (will need to buy a power stabilizer for the lamps) 

* Dropped my ugly shadow on the set in a few frames
* The puppet was not properly tied resulting in a rather jerky animation 

* Bumped the camera a few times and had to approximately re-align (here the "onion skin" feature of DragonFrame was handy) 

* No plan whatsoever
* No timing

* worked without any dope-sheet resulting in moments like: err... in which direction is that leg is supposed to move, again? 

But god was it fun!

Puppet Making: Mouth replacement set (1rst trial)

Here are a first set of (unpainted) replacement mouth for Manny. The learning curve is stiff, and I cannot say that I am fully satisfied with the result. But this will be good enough for doing some lips syncing test runs. I will probably re-do a better set for production purpose...

In a separate post, for those interested, will share the process in excruciating details. Hopefully some professional mouth replacement gods will drop by my blog and will point me toward the light. In the meantime, I will stubbornly hone my craft in the darkness.
  

Manny's jaw-dropping mouth expressions

Scoop of the day: Did you know that Manny had a tongue? Surreal, uh?

In an earlier Post, I indicated that lips syncing will be made using the classic stop-mo technique of "replacement mouths" on the puppet’s skull. The very basic set of mouth required for realistic lips syncing is 7 distinctly shaped mouth pieces. More can be made for other facial expressions, but with seven mouths per character, you can realistically animate any dialog script.

Frame by frame analysis of the Intro cut-scene of Grim Fandango shows that the animators were relying on 8 mouth models (or rather textures) with the 7 classics, plus an additional variation on the “E” allowing for more subtle mouth moves (Manny is often talking to himself, and skull-mumbling is easily rendered alternating "closed  E" with an "open E" mouth piece).

	Sound "P" & "B"
	Sound "F"
	Sound "E" and many other sounds
	Slightly more opened "E" (useful for mumbling)
	Sound "Th" Yes! Manny has a tongue
	Sound "A"
	Sound "O"
	Sound "U"

Starting at the Intro

The first project will be a 3 minute stop motion animation that will stay as close as possible to the Intro cut-scene of the game. It last about 3 minutes and 12 seconds

The film will use puppets made of metal armature. These will be purchased already made. The movie will be shot with a Digital Still Camera, Canon EOS 550D or equivalent, leveraging from the "live view" feature that have appeared in recent  models. The project will also be shot with Dragon StopMotion frame grabber software.

I know... I have not take the cheapest options for a beginner project... I feel a bit like a spoiled kid doing an expensive shortcut into pro equipment, with no hard-won wisdom and experience to back it up. Well... guilty as charge!