Lab 7 - Character Animator
Animate audio with the "Chloe" puppet
Final Character Animator Work Environment
I'm a Little Teapot Animation
Animation was used in the early days of graphics for things like movies and short films. So, it is very interesting to see where it is today and the advancements that have been made since it was first used. I think the technology behind Adobe Character Animator is amazing and honestly, a little magical. I decided to animate my nursery rhyme because when you teach kids nursery rhymes there are usually actions to go along with it to help them remember. So, I thought it would be fun to animate some of the actions I learned for I'm a Little Teapot as a kid. I was excited to get started because I figured it was going to be a lot of fun.
Step 1: Edit "Chloe" puppet
The first step was to give Chloe a makeover. I dyed her hair to dirty blonde; gave her a pink shirt, jeans, grey shoes, and an extra barrette; trimmed her bangs; shrunk her ears; and put on a looser shirt. Chloe also went and got a spray tan.
Colours used:
Hair: front pieces -> #B8912E
back piece -> #A58328
Skin: #FDCAA3
Jeans: #5063AE
Shoes: #D3D6E0
Shirt: Spring Pink Gradient #EFDBEB -> #DEAED0
The pictures below show where the bangs originally overlapped with the edge of the eye and where I changed the shape and placement of them to cover less of the face. I also widened the shirt from its original skin tight look as shown in the two photos of Chloe standing with her arms out. I also widened the legs and enlarged the center part of the pants. Then I moved the legs closer together. The final thing I did was change the shape of her ears so they did not stick out past her hair.
Step 2: Add audio and lip sync to Character Animator project
The next step was to drag and drop the audio into the project and then into the scene. After selecting the audio track in the scene, the mouth is animated to the audio by going to Timeline > Compute Lip Sync Take from Scene Audio. This will animate the mouth using the visemes. At this point, I tried a couple audio clips to ensure that having the background music as well as my audio would not change the visemes in anyway. I determined that they did not change by trying a plain audio clip and a clip with the background music and comparing the two. The background music did not change the visemes which can also be seen in the bottom picture where the visemes start and end within the bounds of my vocals in the audio track.
Step 3: Calibrate the camera
Connecting the camera and body tracker will allow Character Animator to track eye, eyebrows, head, arms, and body movements. Once the camera and body tracker are connected, the calibrate button can be used to calibrate the camera accurately with your face and body.
Step 4: Perform the actions for the animation
I started by recording the body, eye gaze, and face all in one go by ensuring that the red dot was beside each of the Puppet Track Behaviors. When I was ready to record, I pressed the red record button right under the screen with the character.... CUE THE DANCING. After recording, I used the play button to playback the animation to determine if I liked it. I rerecorded it a few times, again dancing in the middle of my living room in front of the camera, until I got the body movements the way I liked them.
The only thing I wasn't happy with was the face because the character only blinked once. So, I removed the red dots from beside body and eye gaze so that only the face was selected to record. Then, I recorded my face a couple times until the blinking and eyebrows were the way I wanted them to be.
Step 5: Trim the end of the animation
At this point, I had all the animations I wanted and I was happy with them, so it was time to apply the finishing touches. The recordings went on a little longer than I wanted them to because I had to stop the recording once I was done. So, I selected all the trigger layers and I trimmed the endings of the recordings by dragging the end of the clips to the left. Once I had the trigger clips the length I wanted them, I set the playhead to just after the end of the clips and I set the scene duration to the playhead using Timeline > Set Scene Duration to Playhead.
Step 6: Export the animation
I was happy with my animation, so I was ready to export the animation. I did this by going to File > Export > Video via Adobe Media Encoder... This put the video export into the queue in Adobe Media Encoder. So, the final step was to press the green play button in Media Encoder to start the export.
Overall, I am very happy with how my animation turned out. It is cute and I think it fits the nursery rhyme well. I hope you enjoy watching it!
Final Nursery Rhyme Animation
Thanks for reading my journal and following along with my animation process! I would like to thank Tom Parkin again for the background song I used when I created my nursery rhyme. I would also like to thank Nova for introducing us to and teaching us how to use Character Animator. It is very cool!
Resources:
I'm a Little Teapot Background Song - Royalty Free Music from MusicCatRF.com
Enjoy a blooper and a weird export if you would like. You'll notice I do a fancy, impromptu leg lift near the end of the first one. As for the second one, I have no clue what happened there.
