Moho Forum

I'm interested in creating animations that are dialog rich. The problem is, as you might expect, I don't want to just create boring talking heads. Which is about what I wind up with now It's not too hard to find action based animations, but can people suggest potential books, tutorials, examples for creating dialog focused scenes?

For example, I know the 180 rule, but it's hard for me to work out how to balance between speakers. When to have a shot with both speakers, and when to look, say, over the shoulder. I can recognize that you don't want a single static shot of two people talking to each other and I can copy some scenes I find, but it's all just guesswork for me on why they decided to do what was done. Also, I don't yet have a good sense of determining what things ought to translate from real life and what doesn't animate well. (I tried to mimic a Lord of the Rings scene and it was pretty dry )

Even pointers on how to animate the head, while talking, so that it's neither still, nor wiggling all the time would be helpful. For example, I get that you want to emphasize key points in a sentence, but does that mean it should be at the apex of a head move or what? Strong heavy emphasis is easier to understand. Simple and subtle interaction is harder for me.

So even youtube examples of what you think are high quality animated dialog focused scenes would be helpful. I could at least use them as examples.

Thanks for any suggestions.

While in a prolonged dialog, I think it's important to remember that you don't actually have to show either character some times, once you've established them. Cuts to scenery, or even scenes depicting what they may be talking about, may help break up the monotony. For example, cutting to a bird flying overhead or a fly buzzing up against a window can flesh out the environment.

You could do worse than take a look at Mike Kelley's animated series Never Too Late. (He has a forum devoted to Anime Studio too...

synthsin75 wrote:you don't actually have to show either character some times, once you've established them

Thanks synthsin75. These are are exactly the kinds of things I might not think about since I haven't had any film (sequential art) classes. Probably obvious to most people and makes a lot of sense once I see it, but definitely not something that's in my head when I'm thinking up a scene.

jahnocli wrote: Never Too Late.

Thanks jahnocli. I'll check it out.

I only cut to a different character or camera angle to emphasize something important to the scene. For example, a key bit of dialog, a punchline, a reaction, a significant gesture...

You can see how this works in my short 'Happy Box', which is basically a 'talking heads' piece.

It's easier to illustrate exactly how this was worked out in the storyboard: http://littlegreendog.com/studio/sessio ... 03_004.php

Before I animated anything in Happy Box, the storyboard was tested in an animatic, which is basically a video of the storyboard edited to the audio track. It was only when I was satisfied with the animatic that I began working on the animated scenes. The final animated scenes were then overcut to the animatic edit almost exactly. My feeling is that if the edit plays well with still pictures, it will play well in motion.

I absolutely believe that preproduction is the most important stage in animation production. If you start with a good animatic, the rest of the project falls into place fairly predictably.

Hope this helps.

(Note: the above link is going to break soon because we're about to launch a new website. I'll update the link when that happens.)

Thanks for sharing I'm starting to get the idea. Right now I'm thinking that if the scene allows interaction, you can use your cuts to emphasize points. I'm thinking that if the scene has a monologue section you would use the character motion to emphasize the points. I think I need to spend some time watching key scenes with an analytical eye to what's going on rather than just the enjoyable experiential eye

That makes me think. Are there any principles of what people do when speaking a while (ie monlogue)? I get the idea of acting it out, but when I try to animate it, it get's all confused in my head Furpuss, if you're reading you do a great job with your heads. I can see that the squashing, stretching, moving in and out and head turning all emphasize the speech, but I sure can't do it well yet

It may be just a matter of practicing lots of animation until it becomes intuitive.

Nancy Beiman's book Animated Performance was just released in a 2nd Edition (about a year after I bought the first edition ) It goes beyond the principals of animation and keyframes etc, and looks at the acting side of animated characters. Chapter 7 specifically covers character interaction and changing leads in multiple character scenes.

They've got the price jacked up pretty high right now
http://www.amazon.com/Animated-Performa ... erformance

strider2000 wrote:I'm interested in creating animations that are dialog rich...Even pointers on how to animate the head, while talking, so that it's neither still, nor wiggling all the time would be helpful.

The meaning of the dialog matters, so sometimes stillness is appropriate; in other cases, flamboyance is called for. Listen to the dialog over and over and think about the emotions and accents.

Glen Keane describes his approach to dialog here.

Camera work is best learned by watching movies with the volume turned down and observe how the story is told visually. These links give useful background on what to look for:
http://www.elementsofcinema.com/cinemat ... hot-sizes/
http://www.elementsofcinema.com/cinemat ... mposition/

For the mother of "talking heads" movie, check out My Dinner with Andre:


Hope that helps.

drumlug13 wrote:Nancy Beiman's book Animated Performance

Thanks drumlug13. I have a subscription to Safari online. I'll see if it's there.

Thanks for the links neeters_guy. Sometimes finding the right examples makes all the difference.

Time to start analyzing ... more