How I did it... if you wonder
This is how I come up with my animation while studying at SJSU. I will discuss my procedure for tackling the dialogue and creature animation.
Dialogue
01 Sci-fi Dialogue Group Project
After forming a team and narrowing down dialogue options, our group proceeded to develop the story and background information for the two characters, Liam, the foolish lieutenant, and Sierra, the cautious sergeant. With the setup mood and information, we started filming our reference and nailing down the camera movement, which interestingly ended up with a wipe pan for the overlapped voice line in the dialogue. We then took notes on the lines, acting, and poses that help understand the action for animation. Besides, another teammate and I were in charge of creating the set, which is a control room with a holographic table and a window that offers a direct view of their destination planet. While that, my other teammates took care of the editing and modifying the 3D models.
Moving to the animation phase, I started blocking out the characters' main poses and timing them accordingly. Then, adding in-between poses or poses that help clarify the action or define the arch, and also blocked out the facial expressions and up and down phonemes. In the spline phase, I focused on the COG of the character, smoothed out the motion path, and offset XYZ translations controls as well as their rotations. Repeating the same process as I move up on other body parts like chest, neck, head, shoulders, and hands. During the process, I also paid attention to the weight shift, the leading action, and offsetting body parts.
In the polishing stage, I watched out for the arch path of the hands, offsetting fingers as to which finger leads that folding or opening. Then it is the facial animation.
The animation process focused on refining facial movement from top to bottom. It began with the eyebrows, adding sharp, expressive actions and overlapping motion. The eye area was then enhanced with clearer blinks, eye darts, and subtle flesh movements for expressions like surprise or squinting.
For the mouth, the animator established jaw motion first—opening, closing, and slight asymmetry—before shaping the lips, especially the bottom lip, to create natural overlap and accurate phoneme forms (“b/p,” “f/v,” “oh,” “u,” etc.). Additional details like mouth puffs and compression during squash‑and‑stretch were included.
The nose was animated to follow the mouth’s vertical movement, and the cheeks were adjusted to show tension or relaxation. Finally, small motions in the inner eye–nose area, outer cheeks, and eyebrow region were polished to unify the overall facial performance.
Throughout the process, I checked in with my professor (big shoutout to Bryan Lind) often to make sure the animation stayed on track. It was also an interesting experience. Due to the time limitation of animation for each animator, one of the teammates and I had to divide a shot and each animate one of the two characters in the same file, so we constantly communicated about who would animate when. We also kept an eye on overlapping actions to avoid any confusing moments in the shot, and made sure our characters interact properly in shared scenes.
Once all the animation was done, we pulled everything together—lighting, textures, the intro title, and the ending—and combined it into one final film. A big thanks to my groupmates: Nico Snow, Tristan Melewicz, and Sukiam Jason.
02 Individual Dialogue
In another project with the awesome professor, Raquel Coelho, my dialogue was randomly selected. First, I listen to it multiple times, and brainstorm in my head what I would do for the characters. I noted down the tones, mood, pause, and emphasized parts of the voice line. I came up with 3 setting ideas, and my final selection is a scenario in which an airplane crashes in the middle of a desert. Three survivors came together to plan an escape from the place. I additionally jotted down possible names, personalities, and background information of characters to help with filming reference. The first pass of reference was not great because they were overacted, as I want to push it in the animation, which I had to simplify and lower the acting in the reference.
During the layout stage, I focused on building the set. I gathered props and backgrounds—some from online references and many reused from previous class resources—and arranged everything into a cohesive environment. I aimed for a sunset look, using a tri‑lighting setup: the sun as the key light, the sky as the fill, and a warm yellow‑orange bounce for reflected light.
A big part of the process was troubleshooting shadows, since Maya’s default settings weren’t giving me the right look at the angle I needed. I also had to figure out how to hide the area lights that were showing up in the playblast. Once the lighting was sorted out, I brought the characters into the scene, placed them in their spots, and set up the camera for the final layout
Once the scene was ready, I began blocking out the golden poses for each character. Similar to the previous project, I added breakdowns and additional poses, including more detailed hand positions and facial expressions. I had to be especially mindful of the first character’s arm movements and make sure the arm openings felt authentic and matched his personality. The same applied to the woman. Her reach was too exaggerated at first, and some of her gestures felt unnatural. I simplified her movements and toned down the intensity, so her performance read more clearly and believably.
When I moved the animation into a spline, the flaws became much more noticeable. Many of the characters’ actions were too fast, and some transitions felt jumpy, making it hard to focus on their facial performance. I also realized I could use certain parts of the dialogue as anticipation rather than relying on simple pauses.
For example, with the first character’s line, “I have part of a plan,” the emphasis lands first on “I have,” but there’s also weight on “part.” The wind‑up during “of the” wasn’t enough to support his action, so I stretched the transition across the second half of “part” through the end of “of the,” building anticipation for “plan.” Because “part” became part of the anticipation rather than a full action beat, I had to reduce almost 90% of the movement it originally had in blocking.
During the polishing stage, I narrowed the work down into smaller chunks and focused on each section carefully. I started from the COG and worked upward through the chest, neck, and head. After that, I refined both arms along with the clavicles and elbows. Even though the characters mostly stayed in place, I still checked for subtle hip shifts to reinforce their weight and make sure they felt grounded. To improve the overall body shape, I added a bit of belly movement and smoothed out the mid‑section transitions. Finally, I polished the fingers—adding slight offsets or grouping certain fingers together, like the pinky with the ring finger or the index with the middle, to create more natural hand motion.
For facial polish, I started by defining the holds—mainly for the eyebrows and eyes. From there, I animated the broader movements, then refined both the inner and outer brows. For the eyes, I added slight socket shifts to introduce asymmetry, especially when paired with the mouth shapes. I also placed blinks during head turns or wide eye darts, and used eye darts themselves to show personality and internal thought.
For the mouth, I focused first on getting the jaw to hit the right words, adding subtle Z‑rotation and X‑translation for drag and overlap. Then I shaped the lips for accurate phonemes: compressing inward for b/p, hitting the teeth for f/v, or stretching outward for e and s. After that, I searched for l, n, d, th sounds and animated the tongue—whether it needed to slap down, curl up, or reach forward. Next, I moved to the cheeks, making them puff or shrink on b/p sounds. I also inflated them slightly during moments of facial tension or when the corners of the mouth stretched up or down. Lastly, I looked out little head nuance to add in the dialogue, especially the woman's part, since she has the longest line, in which her rage can be expressed with the snappy head movement as she delivers the tone. Making sure that the mouth shape differentiates for each word to match the audio.
Creature
01 Quadruped Animation
To understand how a four‑legged creature moves, I began by studying walk and run cycles. I gathered online references of cats and dogs, focusing mainly on their stride patterns. From there, I blocked in the key poses—setting the front legs in contact while the opposite legs moved into passing lift positions, and vice versa. I treated the pelvis and chest almost like two people walking with an offset, and a crucial detail was lifting the scapula to create that upward chest action rather than relying solely on the chest control.
After establishing the main beats, I posed the in‑betweens, paying close attention to the back legs and shaping that kicking motion that naturally drives the front legs forward. With the walk structure in place, I refined the belly, neck and head, and the tail to create a clear, continuous wave flowing through the body as the creature moves.
To make the walk cycle more engaging, I looked at the creature from multiple angles, especially the front and top view, to build the side‑to‑side weight shifts, a subtle contrapposto rotation, and an arched belly that favors one side of the body. From there, I polished the legs, curling the toes during the drag and spreading them outward on contact, which is most noticeable in the front feet. I also refined the tail, added overlap to the ears, and let the whiskers follow the head’s motion.
For the final touches, I ensured the walk looped cleanly. I added a small moment where the creature lifts its head and ears and blinks, as if noticing something in the distance, just enough to break the monotony of a plain cycle. I followed the same overall process for the run, but focused more heavily on posing to emphasize squash and stretch. Because the run cycle has tighter frame spacing, I used the foot placement to create the necessary offsets in spacing while still having both feet hit contact on the same frame.
To be continue...