Back in 2023, I hopped back into blogging by sharing the first dialogue shot I had ever animated. Somehow it’s been over two years since then! Time flies! Anyway, it’s finally time to share another one! This time, I aimed to increase the amount of dialogue and animate some livelier, exaggerated movement. Also, just like those head turn animations I did before, I wanted the character to have a little emotional shift mid-shot. With these things in mind, I got to work! As you might’ve noticed, I like to switch workflows every so often. So I decided to create this motion using the pose-to-pose method. First, I’d establish the key poses, then I’d fill in the in-betweens to smooth things out! Here’s how it went:

Not too bad! Overall, I feel like I succeeded in creating a more exaggerated and dynamic motion than before. The main poses have pretty good contrast, and the character plays in different areas of the screen. That being said, it definitely comes at the cost of the readability of the lip-sync and dialogue in some sections. Modjadji zips between main poses, and this makes some of the mouth shapes hard to track visually. That being said, I did try to find a better balance between areas of movement and areas of rest where I could. There are a couple moving holds here that give the viewer a moment to process the motion. Finding the balance between quick exaggerated movement and readability is absolutely something I’ll continue to work on. Speaking of work…Here’s a little breakdown of the work it took to create this animation! Take a look:

And that’s it for me this month! A bit of a shorter post this time around, but stay tuned! I may or may not have a little 2D animation to share next month! In the meantime, thanks for sticking around!

Modjadji Rig by Ramon Arango

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