portfolio - character animation

The Narrow Way

Key moments from our first 3D animated short and as the title implies, we follow the adventures of Namuh Gnieb on his journey up the Narrow Way, a rocky path that winds around sheer cliffs that gets narrower and more precarious the closer to the Destination he gets.

	The opening scene shows Namuh as he happily enters the wide, smooth entrance of the Way, effortlessly pulling a wagon piled high with all his cherished possessions.
	Everything is great... no worries.
	But, what's this!
	Incredible! A mysterious Helping Hand appears! Namuh comes to a complete stop in amazement. The Hand motions for him to climb on board, but Namuh declines with a thanks, but no thanks smile. The Helping Hand moves away and vanishes in to thin air and Namuh continues on his journey as the path starts to get narrower and rockier. The Helping Hand appears once more, but Nahum declines again with a hearty 'thumbs up, I'm OK' and he continues onward and upward as the Way narrows even more.
	When Namuh's wagon hits a rock, knocking off a box of his favorite trinkets that falls down the side of the cliff, he continues on without pause, determined to reach the Destination. A short distance later the Way becomes too narrow for the wagon and Namuh trips and falls. The wagon and all his possessions tumbles over the side of the cliff and into the abyss.
	Namuh gets up, still determined, and finds that he must inch his way along the sliver of a ledge.
	However, when the Helping Hand appears the third time, Namuh realizes he can't get to the Destination by himself and 'boards' the Hand.
	As the Destination comes into view, a glorious crystaline City, we see now that the Helping Hand is nailed to a wood beam, and thus learn who the Helping Hand really is.

WNEM TV5 - Grid Iron Maddness

Coming Soon.

WNEM TV5 - Station ID - Sports

Coming Soon.

WSMH - Expressway Ford

Coming Soon.

Lip Sync Phonemes

There's really only three good sites on the internet that have reasonably good examples of phonemes (mouth shapes representing the basic sounds of speech). An exagerated set of just the mouth based on the Preston Blair series is available on Gary Martin's site. Annosoft, makers of lipsync products for animators, has a basic set of phonemes, while this Japanesse site has a nice set of full face phonemes and facial expressions.

By gleaning from these sites and studying our own facial structure, chrusion | FX has formed own set of 18 phoneme poses for smoother lip sync performance versus the more typically used 10 to 12 poses.