Facial Animation 001

Some exercises on blinks and how to use them to give more life to a character, and reinforce the movement.

Basic blink:

I found a very good article about blinks by Carlos Baena from where I got this particular tip that I really liked. I changed it a little, but I like the idea of the eyes blinking at different times.

"As for ideas on how to animate a blink, this is something that I've used a lot which I learned from another animator here - I offset the blinks but the actual closure of the eyes occurs on the same frame. This allows for the organic offset without the cartoony (but cool, of course!) eyeblinks that Pixar, for example, often uses.

Basically it works like this:

Frame 10: both eyes are open
Frame 11: Left eye begins to close
Frame 12: Right eye begins to close
Frame 13: BOTH eyes are completely closed
Frame 15: Left eye completely open
Frame 16: Right eye completely open"

Blink and Eye Movement: 

Blink and Head Movement: 

The character is Groggy Rig 1.0.0 (by Zubuyer Kaolin).

Posted in: 3D Animation,Maya,Practice