This week’s content covered the basic approach to blocking and an introduction to lip sync.

Speech production mainly relies on five parts of the body: the tongue, lips, jaw, teeth, and vocal cords. The focus should be on listening to the rhythm and connected flow of the audio, rather than matching it directly to written text.

Lip sync should be built around phonemes, the smallest units of sound that distinguish words.

To improve efficiency, mouth shape poses can be pre-saved using Studio Library.

Blocking

This week, I focused mainly on creating the character’s overall body movement. My primary goal was to establish the main direction and flow of the character’s actions.

Reflection & Feedback

One of the early problems I encountered — which is also a common one — was that I often moved only one part of the character, like the head, without involving the rest of the body. This made the animation feel very stiff, because in real life, any movement naturally includes subtle motion in other parts of the body. Adding these secondary movements helps make the overall animation feel more natural and believable.

Another commonly overlooked point is the character’s facial orientation. I realized that the face should be turned at least 45 degrees toward the camera, rather than showing a full side profile. When only one eye is visible, it tends to reduce the overall expressiveness of the performance.

In some of the more exaggerated movements, I tried to move the character’s chest by translating it directly. However, the correct approach is to achieve this motion through rotation, not translation. Simply translating the chest control makes the action look unnatural and awkward.