Animation Breakdown - Darth Vader Lip Sync!

So the first week of classes have come to an end and I thought it would be appropriate to post one of the animations I did this summer! Now this animation was a little different than what I normally do. Normally I film reference from the start. However for this one, I had a clear idea in mind and decided to just jump into it. Now I wouldn't recommend that, but this was an idea I had for so long, and had acted out enough times that I knew what I wanted to do. The second thing that makes this animation strange is the fact that I did the whole thing in a day. Since class was starting soon, I set aside an entire day just to animate, and I'm pretty happy with the result!

I found this really cool rig called the RC Rig and I just knew I had to do something with it. I was trying to come up with a cool animation when suddenly it hit me. I've been doing so much Star Wars art lately, why not do a Star Wars animation! I decided that I wanted to do something where a really geeky voice transformed into James Earl Jones' voice. I later decided that after RC became Darth Vader, I wanted him to force choke the "cameraman." Now that I had my concept, it was time to animate!

The first thing I did was get some of the basic movements where I wanted them and to begin messing with the camera.

I then began to refine some of those movements, add some blinks, and start messing with the lip sync. I also changed the hand gesture from an open palm, to a more choke-like pose.

The next step was to add some eye movement. I needed RC to look at the camera as he did his force choke. Also I needed the eyes to move slightly around while he was holding to make them seem more natural.

After that, I touched up some other movements and began to slightly refine the camera some more.

All that was left was to touch up any final movements, get the camera exactly where I wanted it, and to add sound! Once that was done I ended up with this!

Well I hope you enjoyed this quick breakdown! Next time I'll go into more detail, showing you all the stages of the animation from start to finish. This was just to give you a quick insight into how I work!

As always enjoy!

~Josh