“Happy” speech postures with clusters

My visual reference is mainly from the scene where Flynn Rider goes “Hi”. I wanted to capture the “H” and also use the beginning and end faces as the “neutral” poses. For the “P”, I decided to imitate infamous “smolder” (and so the “E” became a transition between that and the second neutral face). In retrospect these probably weren’t the best references to use since they’re kinda too exaggerated, but I don’t really have time to change it all so…

References + Stills:

neutral 1 ref

neutral 1 persp

neutral 1 front

neutral 1 side

(H)A ref

(H)A persp

(H)A front

(H)A side

P ref

P persp

P front

P side

E “ref” (is more of a transition pose)

E persp

E front

E side

neutral 2 ref

neutral 2 persp

neutral 2 front

neutral 2 side

So I mostly used the method where I had the clusters attached to the lattices that affect certain vertices just so I could manage the symmetry more easily. The lattices generally worked well except it screwed up when I started editing the model, so I had to completely redo the nose and mouth.

Obviously not everything is working properly (especially the mouth). These are pretty much the things on my priority list to fix the next time (and more can be added if I get more suggestions):
– The mouth
– The edge of the eyebrows
– The “mid brow” area
– Sides of nose crease (if it’s really blowing me off)

“Happy” speech postures with blendshapes

Final video (with all 3 views)

Video reference for the word “happy” (4:37)

Base model

base front

base persp

base side

A, P, EE, and neutral face respectively with their references (H is merely a transition from neutral to A, not its own model)

“A” ref

“A” front

“A” persp

“A” side

“P” ref

“P” front

“P” persp

“P” side

“EE” ref

“EE” front

“EE” persp

“EE” side

“neutral” ref

“neutral” front

“neutral” persp

“neutral” side

3 Interpolating Expressions

3/4 View

Front view

Side view

Still images:

References:

Static Polygonal Face Model with a Specific Expression

Total Polycount: 5010
Face+Neck+Ears: 2148
Hair+Hair Bands: 1444
Eye (individually): 488
Eyebrow (individually): 14
Teeth+Gums: 168
Shirt: 246

I wasn’t really sure how to do the Gouraud shading and whenever I searched on the internet it just said it’s the “smooth shade view” mode, so I decided to have a lit version rendered from mental ray (the geometry isn’t smoothed out though), a “smooth shade view” version, a “flat shade view” version, and a wireframe version.

Lit “Gouraud” front

Lit “Gouraud” persp

Lit “Gouraud” side

“Gouraud” front

“Gouraud” persp

“Gouraud” side

Flat front

Flat persp

Flat side

Wireframe front

Wireframe persp

Wireframe side

Topology Reference:

Character model reference (Flynn Rider’s prototype/older concept art):

Expression reference (the face is mainly based on the circled face on final!Flynn’s expression sheet, but the other picture is there to kind of reference prototype!Flynn with a more “final!Flynn-like” expression):