CORALINE FACIAL ANIMATION !

After having been a Principal Character Designer on Coraline(see previous post), Henry Selick, knowing I was also an animator, asked me if I might Design , Develop and Test all of the Facial Animation (Expressions, Mouth shapes, Dialogue,Teeth) for every character in the film. How they will emote, and talk and hold their mouths and move their brows from every angle. I WAS ECSTATIC!! I did thousands of drawings designing the MASSIVE library of mouth shapes and expressions, and a SLEW of traditional animation dialogue tests to make sure everything worked just right. Henry wanted something special and I took this task very seriously. I am a huge stop motion fan , so to be involved in this part of the process after having designed many of these guys was a dream come true. My drawings and tests for each character were then translated into 3D and the best stop motion team in the world took what I did and went to town. THEY ARE BRILLIANT ! Here is a VERY , VERY , TINY sample of just some of my facial animation design work.