Eilidh Brown

Synopsis

Audiences can fall in love with a character through their powerful and nuanced facial performances. In live-action film, this would be down to a strong performance from an actor. However, in computer-generated animation, the facial performance is created by an animator and their digital puppet – which is known as a character rig.

Through an adaption of a scene from Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, this project aimed to investigate how the analysis of dynamic facial expressions can influence the creation of a character’s facial rig, with the purpose exploring how this can then deepen the subtlety and nuance of an animated performance.

Analysis of Emma Thompson’s original performance was used as a key reference when creating the rig, which was then used to animate an adaption of the original scene. The character model used is by Sergi Caballer.

View the full project here.

Project info

Developer Eilidh Brown
Showcase year 2020
Programme Computer Arts

Much Ado About Emoting

By adapting a scene from Kenneth Branagh’s film of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, this project explores how dynamic expression can influence the creation of facial rig, and how that benefits an animated performance.

Motivation

Whenever I watch animated movies - or movies in general - I am always drawn to the strong character and storytelling moments. I love the subtly in the performances that helped an audience connect to these characters, and I wanted to explore how they did it!

I also have a keen interest in both technical art and character animation, so I wanted to devise a project that would let me do both.