Domestic violence isn’t a laughing matter in real life, but in the XandY film the relationship between Marie Clarkson a woman of relative small stature and her taller but awkwardly weak husband Douglas brings comic relief to the otherwise serious tone of the film.

Marie slaps Douglas

To animate the slapping motion, I started Douglas moving before the actual sound of the slap to create anticipation in his movement.  It took about 1/2 hour to key the basic movements.  I then moved onto the next shot which Douglas delivers a short 20 second line.  To lipsync the dialog I used the Blender Shape Key function for Douglas’s mesh. 

I did this while watching the Golden Globe awards, which I didn’t find entertaining.  This awards program doesn’t actually have any entertaining like singing or dancing in between the industry patting itself on the back. 

Anyway, back to the couple of shots I worked on this evening for the XandY Film.  I don’t have any interesting challenges to report.  The whole exercise was rather routine actually, so I’ll sign off with that and try to think of ways to make the dry busy work of translating my vision to the animatic more interesting.