The Pursuit of Character

Ran across this link earlier today and it’s a pretty interesting read about facial expressions. It goes on to say that emotional facial expressions are innate and not learned visually. It goes over a study where it compares sighted athletes to blind ones and how they produce similar expressions.

There’s also a useful bit in there about the difference between social smiles and true smiles. Social smiles use just the mouth area, whereas true ones cause the cheeks to rise and eyes to narrow.

Link: Facial expressions of emotion are innate, not learned, says new study

Remember Shane Acker’s short film ‘9′ from awhile ago? I think the first time I saw it as at Siggraph 2005 and I loved it. There was atmosphere, character, and an entire world out there. Tim Burton took notice of the short film and ended up producing it into a full length feature film with Shane Acker directing. The trailer rocks, this looks like an animated version of a high-octate, summer blockbuster movie. Looking foward to seeing this when it comes out.

Here’s a new trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens from Dreamworks Animation. This looks like it’s going to be a fun movie. Enjoy!

I just uploaded the splining pass on the dialogue shot I’ve been working on. Feel free to drop by and check it out. You can get to it by hitting the animation link at the top of this blog or just clicking the link below. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Sometimes I Lie – spline

I thought these clips were interesting in regards to the eyebrows when watching these movies a few weeks back. I’ve been meaning to post something about them, but only now have had the time to put ‘em up. Hope you find this post useful!

This first clip is from Universal’s Wanted with Angelina Jolie’s character reacting to something that Morgan Freeman’s character is saying. I find it interesting because she looks over to him then there’s the slightest pause before her eyebrow goes up. It’s almost like she’s thinking, “say what…”, or something like that. It’s probably just me, but I haven’t given much thought to animating eyebrows like that. It could be really useful (dependng on character and situation), especially when you have a character in a moving hold.

This second clip is from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and I didn’t realize it at the time but it’s almost the same eyebrow action that happens in the Wanted clip, albiet in 2D form. What’s interesting in this clip is how the whole body contributes to the gesture instead of just the eyebrow moving as in the live action clip above.

Here’s the official trailer for the new Wolverine movie coming out next year. I liked the first 2 X-Men movies, but didn’t care much for the 3rd. I really like the idea of showing the character’s origin before joining the X-Men though, hopefully they’ll continue along this path with others.

I never really got into the whole Dragonball thing myself. Just thought fans of the series would dig the trailer. Enjoy!

Check out the newest trailer for Terminator: Salvation. This looks like it’s gonna be a fun movie. Always liked the basic idea behind the Terminator franchise so I’m looking forward to seeing this one.

Yesterday marked the last day for the animation clean-up crew at the Jim Henson Creature Shop. I was only there for a short time, but it was a great experience. The crew there was very friendly and super helpful. I also learned a ton about cleaning up mocap animation and I’m thankful for that. Getting some solid experience cleaning up mocap was one of the main reasons I wanted to work there. Overall I had a great time working there and I hope to work with all those guys again sometime.

Thanks for the good times guys!

The Jim Henson Creature Shop (where I’m working right now) was featured on the fxguide podcast for their work on Sid the Science Kid! They get pretty in-depth on the process of producing a show. Check out the link below.

fxguide – Sid the Science Kid

Thanks to Rico for the heads up!