Monster Facial Animation

I’ve been gone from the lab for the last 2 weeks, visiting family in Sri Lanka. In that time, the Monster’s character rig had been finished. So, I spent this week completing the facial animation for the monster in scene 4. The facial structure of the monster was a lot different from the other characters in the project so it was a bit harder to get this character to look good while talking but I think I was able to make a good compromise between the shape of the mesh and the movements of the actor’s performance. There are still a few minor kinks I need to iron out from this animation like random pops in some joints but, for the most part, the animation is complete.

Next week, I’ll need to work on scene 3 for which we actually didn’t do any facial mocap. Which means I’ll likely have to animate that scene by hand unless I can cut parts of this performance and stitch it together to make a cohesive performance. Luckily the monster doesn’t speak in scene 3 which makes animating the scene significantly easier.