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.

Week 14 mainly focused on the presentation and feedback for last week’s Creature Study group PPT. Our group chose to research feline movement. In this group project, I mainly worked on the study of the cat’s body, the analysis of feline jumping and running movements, and part of the slide layout and explanation.

The main focus of this presentation was to understand real animal movement by observing body structure, movement rhythm, and how these can be shown in animation. Feline movements are usually light, flexible, and highly coordinated. When cats walk, run, jump, or turn, the spine, scapula, pelvis, tail, and limbs all work together. Therefore, when analysing feline movement, it is not enough to only observe the legs. It is also important to look at body weight, spine bending, and how the tail helps with balance.

During the preparation of the PPT, I mainly organised the basic movement features and reference materials of feline animals. I found that a cat’s body is very flexible, especially the stretch and compression of the spine during movement. When walking, cats move quietly and steadily. When running or jumping, the body shows stronger stretch and compression. The tail is not just moving by itself. It also helps the body keep balance, which is connected to the overlap and delay principles we learned before.

The presentation feedback also made me realise that creature animation is not only about copying the surface movement of an animal. It is also important to understand the structure and function behind the movement. For example, why cats can land softly, why the body stretches during running, and why the tail changes during turning. These observations can help us create more believable animal movement in animation.

Through Week 14’s learning and presentation, I gained a more systematic understanding of feline movement. Group work also helped me learn how to organise observation materials into a clear presentation. If I continue working on creature animation, I need to analyse reference videos more carefully and break animal movement down into body mechanics, timing, spacing, and overlap. Then I can apply these movement rules to my animation practice.

Week 13 was mainly divided into two parts. The first part continued to discuss Dialogue Shot Blocking Plus, focusing on feedback for the short dialogue animation and li

From this feedback, I found that my dialogue shot blocking still needs more improvement. My blocking is currently missing some keyframes, so the transitions between actions are not complete enough, and some parts of the performance are not clear enough. The tutor mentioned that the character’s facial direction and body direction need to stay consistent. Especially for the exaggerated “V” facial expression, it should not only stay on the face. The body should also support the same direction. In other words, the performance should not only come from the head and facial expression. The body also needs to be involved.

This class also helped me understand the order of facial movement more clearly. Facial expression changes do not usually happen all at once. They can start from the eyes and eyebrows first, and then move to the nose and mouth. This can make the expression feel more natural and layered. The tutor also reminded me that some keyframes could be more exaggerated, so the character’s emotion and performance can be easier for the audience to read.

The second part of the class started to introduce Creature Study. The tutor used the PDF to explain some basic ways of observing animal movement, and also arranged next week’s group animation task. For this task, we need to choose an animal, analyse its movement, create a PPT, and give a presentation. I chose to join the feline animal group. Next, we need to observe and analyse cat movement, such as walking, running, jumping, body weight changes, spine movement, and how the tail works with the body.

Through Week 13, I realised that dialogue animation needs more careful control of keyframes, facial rhythm, and body movement. At the same time, I also started to learn about creature animation. Feline movement is a very interesting direction for me because their actions are light, flexible, and have clear body structure and rhythm. Next week’s group task will help me observe animal movement more systematically and translate these observations into animation analysis.

Week 12 mainly focused on breathing idle animation. Breathing idle animation is a very subtle movement, but it can make a character feel more alive when they are standing still. The character is not completely still. There can be small movements in the chest, shoulders, head, and body weight. When making this type of animation, the movement should not be too exaggerated, otherwise it may look like the character is acting too much. The key is to keep it natural and make the loop smooth.

These references helped me understand that breathing idle is not about adding many movements, but about showing the character’s state through very small changes.

This week, I also worked on Assignment: Dialogue Shot – Blocking. I needed to arrange the character’s pauses according to the key words in the audio. I found that dialogue animation is not as simple as I thought. It also needs many keyframes to control subtle facial expressions.

In Week 11, the class mainly focused on tail animation. The main goal was to understand how to use overlap and delay when animating a tail. The tail does not move at the same time as the body. Instead, its movement is affected by the body and travels gradually from the root to the tip.

During the practice, I learned that the root of the tail usually moves first, while the middle part and the tip follow slightly later. If the whole tail moves at the same time, the animation looks very stiff. By adding small delays between different parts of the tail, the movement can feel more natural, with more weight and flexibility.

This lesson helped me understand the role of overlapping action more clearly. This technique can be used not only for tails, but also for hair, clothes, ears, or other soft parts of a character, making the animation feel more alive.