Confident Walk Cycle

Confident Walk Cycle from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Searching Walk Cycle

Searching Character Walk Cycle from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Snooty Character Walk Cycle

Snooty Character Walk Cycle from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Progress for Argument Dialogue

Argument Dialogue Rough Pass 02 from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Originally for my 2nd rough pass I was going to go through the whole shot and put all the primary and secondary breakdowns. However, I wanted to try out a new process where I tackle the animation chunk by chunk. I plan to get work on one small chunk at a time, animate that chunk up to near final animation and then move on to animating the next.

Redoing Michael's Dialogue

I've decided to redo a dialogue scene I did a couple years back. Here is the original:

2D Dialogue Final from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Originally, I used a super simple stand-in character model because I didn't have a set character design to work with at the time.  I intended to go back and draw the  actual character model over that animation. 

However, I ended up deciding to just redo the animation all together. The rough model I'm using in the animation below is the rough, simplified version of the actual character design. Here is the rough 1st pass:

Argument Dialogue: Rough 1st Pass from Karena Green on Vimeo.

A page of Michael's style of phrasing

The storyboards

Straight Ahead Exercise #2

Wanted to try another quick exercise animated straight ahead. I would love to someday animate Goofy for a short. So I used a rough version of his character model for this exercise as a way of practicing his broad acting style.

Straight Ahead Rude Awakening from Karena Green on Vimeo.

2 Animations

Case Closed Animatic 2nd Pass from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Creepy Kid 2nd Pass from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Dialogue Completely Finished! Finally!!

Dialogue Final from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Boards/Animatic

Here is another project I am planning on animating. It is a snippet of a song called "Case Closed" from an Off-Broadway called Zombie Prom. The whole song would take too long to animate so for now I'm only working on my favorite part.

These are the first rough storyboards I drew.

I revised some of the staging in Photoshop then made a rough animatic to match the lines to the panels.

Case Closed Animatic from Karena Green on Vimeo.

Dialogue Anim Main Character Done

Pacha Done Dialogue from Karena Green on Vimeo.

All that is left to animate and clean up is the daughter and the bunny.

Dialogue Anim Progress

Trying to clean up a dialogue piece I started back in my Advanced 2D animation class. My professor was Anthony Wong, who animated characters like Pacha (Emperor's New Groove) and Quasimodo (Hunchback of Notre Dame), hence the reason the character looks similar to Pacha because he was the character model we were using for all of the character driven assignments.

The pantomime and phrasing are pretty much set in place, I am only adding in/re-doing secondary actions (i.e. crown and cape). Afterwards, I will work on animating the daughter and stuffed rabbit. (The dialogue clip I believe is from the movie "Signs.")

Pacha Dialogue Cleaning Up from Karena Green on Vimeo.

One Of My Favorite Acting Scenes

          Back in my 3rd year of college, I was taking 3D Computer Animation 2 with one of my favorite professors, Warren Trezavant. He always encouraged us to bring in either a single shot or a whole scene that had acting choices that we really liked. We would show the scene to the rest of the class and talk about why we feel it works so well. Then he would go through the scene frame by frame to show us the use of  animation principles that strengthen the performance(if it was an animated scene). Whether live action or animated he would also help us breakdown the scene to determine the acting & storytelling principles such as, the goal, the tactics, the physical task, visual rhythm, the offsetting of actions, how the spotlight of attention is being moved around etc.

          I still keep up with collecting my favorite performances, breaking them down and identifying which principles or mechanics are being used. One of my favorites is this scene from Rise of the Guardians, where Jack Frost and Pitch Black confront each other in Antarctica.

One specific part that stuck out to me was between 00:11-00:13 Pitch has this almost hidden smirk as he says, "...and I'll let her go." Which is a great example of a subtle acting choice that complements his personality. When Pitch gets the staff he does this swaggering sway almost like a little dance to say, "I win." As he does this he still has that smirk and gives Jack this up and down look that reveals his thought of "How could you be so foolish?" Then that smirk immediately drops, his eyebrows flick up, his "dance" stops and he does only a slight head shake when he says, "No." 

          Students starting out in animation tend to be over dramatic when they first animate a real acting scene (as oppose to a bouncing ball or a vanilla walk cycle). This scene is a great example of subtle acting. That subtlety is actually a much stronger choice for a character like Pitch. That response could have gone the route an over dramatic "BWAHAHAHA!!! I lied because I'M EVIL!!" (Not those words exactly, but you get the idea.) However, Pitch is not one of those comedic villains that screams his dastardly plans at the top of his lungs. He is calculating, swift and always lurking in the shadows, so subtlety suits him best.