Week 3

 Mouth Tracking:

The mouth tracking was very time-consuming, at least for my assigned performance intervals. Miri the character was REALLY expressive with her mouth expressions. I needed way more key poses to define the movements.

The first pass was okay but needed more supportive keyframes to maintain the shapes. For example, the upper lip tracker lost track of the shape because it moved in a short period of frames, hence adding additional keyframes to adjust the timing. 

The second pass was still not great in my opinion. Another annoying factor that's messing with the tracking was the inconsistency of the tracker position, especially for the lower inner lip. Despite going back and forth between keyframes to ensure the tracker position was as similar as possible, some movements like biting lip followed by opening mouth will result in the tracker losing a consistent position.  Moreover, the change in lighting and shadows just makes it even harder to get consistent.

Reflection:

I have to say I wasn't satisfied with the mouth tracking. However, Dr. Kennedy's feedback did take some stress off my shoulders. He said the majority of the shapes, especially the inner lip were decent. However, he did suggest moving the inner lip trackers more towards the inner mouth, as that should be the established position according to the neutral pose. 

I might redo the entire mouth tracking next week with Dr. Kennedy's feedback in mind. Focusing on minimizing the keyframes and making sure the inner lips position stay consistent.