Toolkit 2: Facial Animation 4 - 6

 Eyes, Brows and Head Movement

Now focusing on the upper head hemisphere, I worked with the central eye controls and the eyebrows to exaggerate the established mouth movements. For easy keying, I created a piece of script that selected all upper-head controls, and made this into a shortcut on a custom Maya shelf:

Open the script editor > select the appropriate controls > middle mouse the script into the expression editor > make the script into a single line and end with a semicolon > middle mouse drag the completed script onto a custom shelf > rename the new icon. 

I also keyed some basic body movement to accompany the facial animation, creating a second piece of script and a new icon to select all the body controls at once, as seen below:

I squash & stretched the main eye controls to enhance the characters' expressions, not focusing on blinking just yet. The above outcome also demonstrates some basic body movement, keyed in a sequence of 6 frames to create a 'bounce' effect. At this stage, I worked with the body through a linear tangent (step keys) to keep the process simple, logical and digestible. 

In-Between's and Blink

I finalised this facial animation exercise by changing to spline tangents, and accessorizing the extreme poses with in-betweens to reduce periods of stillness. I also used blinks to fill areas with no animation:

Overall, I'm satisfied with my first attempt at facial animation. I focused on avoiding 'floating' movements through crisp in-betweens and eye movement. Body movement is far from complete, but I think the fundamental head and upper-body movements are successful. I struggled the most with clean-up, and identifying imperfections within my animation. However, I think I'll develop an eye for these adjustments with further experience with lip syncing and facial animation.