11 Second Animation: Video referencing

In one of my previous posts I explained the relevance for the animator of video referencing. This time, the task was to film myself acting the scenes of my animation.


For this task I had memorized my characters' lines and had a good sense of the timing in which they'll have to be animated so that their actions are in sync with the soundtrack. With the help of the storyboard and the animatic I had already figured out what exactly they'll be doing and how they will move.

Since my animation features two characters, I filmed my lines of each of them, one at a time. Thus, this is my female character's referencing:

Referencing the first character (Lindsey):

I can't have the camera only filming her side, so I thought her actions woud look "cleaner" with a bit of an angle. A 45 degrees angle would be the appropriate, but the space limitations only allowed me to film in this angle. There is really not much difference in the final reference, so I didn't worry much about that.

She really needs to express her complete boredom: she's not really reading that magazine, and she isn't paying much attention to her brother either.

Referencing the second character (Michael):

Michael will be very communicative therefore he'll move his hands and arms a lot.
I thought I'd also spend some time in referencing the hands' movements, since these help him express himself very much.