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Here is a lip-sync character acting animation. The audio was taken from the 11SecondClub website, and is from the show series "The Mick." It's actually 12 seconds and took a while due to other work.
I normally don't publicly display my drawings of other's intellectual properties. I was working on a drawing when the character Dr. Strange popped into my head. I thought, I wonder what he would look like in this style. Then I wondered about how Tony Stark would look in this style, then Steve Rogers, and so on. Here are the sketch headshots of some Marvel characters that I did one night. 
Here are some walk cycles. I was experimenting with pacing to make the man an "average" long-stride walker and the woman an irritated hasty walker.
March 3, 2020 Update
I've added a moving background to each of the walk cycles. In Toon Boom Harmony Essentials, I set the keyframes for the starting and ending positions. Then I added keyframes every 2 frames to line up with the exposure of the drawings. Finally, I changed all the in-between frames to stop-motion keyframes. This makes the background motion line up with the character to prevent the character from sliding forward.
March 20, 2020 Update
This walk cycle is of a large man whose arms swing out more. His walk is slightly slower than the average man's. I began this short sequence with a simple plot. However, I didn’t know how or when it would end. I knew if I started to storyboard it from the beginning and chronologically proceeded, then I would be stuck past the point of the plot. So, I resolved to try to think of the storyboard as “keyframes” to a story. In animation, keyframe drawings give the artist an idea of the defining states that will make up the animation. The animator will look through the keyframes and begin to develop what frames should lie between them to create the illusion of motion. I used this keyframing idea to put together this storyboard from start to finish. This first came to my awareness in my storyboarding class in college. I was assigned to lay out a short story in six panels. Then, I was to go back and add six more panels, one between each of the original set of panels. After years of convincing myself that I wouldn’t use this method of storyboarding, I decided to give it a shot with this one.  One immediate proactive I’ve found with this is that I can finally see the end to this project instead of a blank! It might not be the last shot, but I now know what I am finishing with. This contains, at least, the last action the main character will make.  This is the first set of “breakdown” panels that go between the first set of panels. With the first set, I know the series of events that will take place between panel 1 and panel 6. Now I can illustrate even more important beats that come between panel 1 and panel 6. There is no “breakdown” panel between panel 4 and panel 5, as I thought it wasn’t necessary to bring out yet.  Here, I begin to define the opening scene, keeping in mind that panel 1 has already been drawn.  This becomes a straight-ahead page, as each beat is sequential between panel 1 and 1a. I decided to use capital letters to label panels between a number and lowercase letter.  This page then picks up after panel 1a, and I have to remember the panels that have already been drawn. Because they were significant beats to the story, I can remember them fairly easily.  This is another straight-ahead page to complete the necessary beats of the story. As this process continues, I decide to omit panel 3.  Several pages later, I refer to panel 6 to develop the final panels of the storyboard. Panel 6 ended up not being the last panel as it didn’t adequately deliver the “punch-line” of the story.
Now that I have laid out all of the panels, I can piece them together. The entire storyboard can be found here. I may consider using this method in the future as it causes me to think early on about how the piece should end. |
ArtistDiamond Stewart is interested in animation, comic book art, video games, and music. 
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