This week, I moved forward from blocking the body movement to working on lip sync animation for my character. The goal was to make the dialogue feel natural, expressive, and emotionally connected to the body performance already in place.
Challenges & Observations:
I found that less is often more—overshooting the mouth shapes can make the performance feel exaggerated or artificial
Emotions play a big role even in neutral dialogue—so I focused not just on mechanics, but on tone and intention
Combining lip sync with micro-expressions (such as blinking, slight eye darts, and facial asymmetry) added a lot of subtlety
Next Steps:
In the upcoming stage, I plan to refine the facial performance further by adding secondary animation, such as:
Small head shifts that match the character’s thought process
Natural blinking patterns
More nuanced emotion syncing, especially in silent pauses between words