Final Major Pre-Production: Dialogue "you're not important" (Personal)

The first project that I started working on for my Final Major was my first of two dialogue pieces. I knew that I wanted to complete two dialogue pieces, one male and one female. I wanted them both to be very different, yet interesting for me to work on.

Previously I have never had the chance to animate a female dialogue piece so this was the one I was most excited to start. I also hadn't really done anything where the character was angry and getting very over emotional, so that was something I looked for when hunting for a sound clip. Eventually I found a clip I thought had nice timing and a good rhythm to it that would work well for animation. 

As soon as I eventually decided, I had to start building a character and a setting. For me, I find this important for when I come to referencing. I like to know how what kind of character I am trying to convey and that in turn will influence how they act in certain situations. 

After roughly planning out what situation my character would be in and the context for the animation, I did some research for inspiration. I looked at characters who were similar to how I wanted mine to be. I also looked at facial expressions I thought would work well for the character with the dialogue.

After research I threw out a few quick poses I thought may work, just to get a feel for what sort of movement I wanted.

I also explored a few options for the core emotion she would be driven by throughout the piece and what sort of gestures she may make depending on that emotion.

Although I wanted her to be mainly angry and frustrated throughout the dialogue, I didnt want that to be her only emotion. There is a lot of opportunity in the dialogue for many emotions, from a sad and contemplative pause while thinking to an outburst filled with rage. I explored some facial expressions she may hit and worked them into some poses too. 

After I was happy with the character and had a fairly solid idea of the sort of emotions and gestures I would like her to hit, it was time for thumbnailing.

I chose to work on the second animatic as I liked the change from her started much more calm and slightly upset to then bursting with anger and acting in quite an intimidating way.

I am really excited to start working on this dialogue piece. There is a lot of opportunity to push poses and facial expressions. Also, as I want to eventually get into character animation, this is exactly the type of thing I enjoy the most and want to improve my skills at. I can see myself spending the most time on this project when production time comes.