Week 15 mainly focused on polishing my Dialogue Shot. Compared with the earlier blocking stage, this week was no longer only about setting the main actions and key poses. The focus was to refine the character’s performance and make the movement, facial expression, and dialogue rhythm feel more natural.
During the polishing process, I made a notes image for myself to record the problems I needed to fix. For example, the character’s facial direction should stay consistent with the body direction, instead of only moving the face. Blinks should also not be added randomly. They need to match the character’s emotion and the rhythm of the dialogue. Also, the body needs some subtle movement, especially when the character is speaking or changing emotion. The body, head, eyes, and hand actions should work together.
This polish stage made me realise that dialogue animation is more complicated than I expected. It is not only about lip sync, and it is not just making the character speak. It needs many small keyframes to control facial expression, eye direction, hand gestures, and body weight. For example, the eyes and eyebrows usually show the emotion first, and then the nose, mouth, and head follow. Some key poses also need to be more exaggerated, so the audience can read the character’s emotion more clearly.
Through the Week 15 practice, I started to understand the importance of the polish stage more clearly. Blocking helps me build the structure of the movement, but polish makes the character feel more alive. Next, I need to continue adjusting the animation based on these notes, so the performance becomes clearer, more natural, and better connected with the audio rhythm.