 Welcome back to another FNA for new animators, and I'm continuing these series about animation blocking This is part seven and today we're gonna talk about making sounds In this blocking out your animation series There are a lot of parts and all the things that I'm gonna talk about and a lot of things that I think are important But making sounds is very very underrated. So what does that mean making sounds? So there are two ways that I approach animation in terms of quickly checking my timing for blocking and that is making Sounds as I come up with a shot and this could be someone that could fall down and you could do Whatever sound you have and I make that sound over and over and over and over and then I animate it and then I kind of make The sound as I animate Oh, what over and over so have that timing in my head and then I make a play blast to look at my animation and go If the animation doesn't quite sync up with what I just made sound-wise then you know The timing is kind of off so I make sounds over and over and over and I keep making those sounds while I animate And the main thing is that I make those sounds when I look at my play blast and this can be used You know for someone falling for a punch for a head turn anything that you have where you feel like a Swoosh or even if you have someone going hmm, okay, and you want to time that head turn to that sound where someone goes Hmm-hmm, and you make that sound Hmm-hmm, and you keep animating it look at your head turn and does that head turn match the sound that you just made It's very easy you sound super silly You just have to start making those sounds in your head depending on your neighbors and headphones in the area How to work, but if you're home It's much easier and I use this method a lot and especially when it comes down to Vehicles and ships and flybys and laser blasts and I've been working on a lot of Star Wars movies lately and the typical That's just something that you do maybe just me but I do this a lot and especially with flybys and swishes and things I frequently look at a shot and go Make those sounds and as an example I can show you a shot that I did on the force awakens and this is a shot if you look at the trailer It's somewhere in the middle I can scrub through there and you can see this where you have an x-wing chasing its high fighter So let's give this the full-screen treatment and you can see there's this big flyby across camera So you have the x-wing going And so on and so on so when I have a shot like this Even if it's an x-wing that kind of turns around or a tie fight It's kind of a swoosh and shoots once or twice It's just for me at least very common that I look at the shot and I imagine the timing even before I start It's kind of my animation blocking where I imagine the shot in my head, but that's already with sounds I think of the All that silly stuff helps me tremendously so that's one way of doing it But you can also make those sounds and that's my second approach You can make those sounds and then record those sounds and put that into Maya and again This can work for a physical shot in terms of like vehicles and flying or punching or whatever And you can go pretty crazy with how you can imagine a shot Of course that all depends on how much time you have so you could technically record certain elements separately and that kind of Mixed that together into one big cohesive shot elements sound reference type of library Background movie and then you can animate based on that again always as a springboard It doesn't have to be exactly that but imagine you'd go crazy Okay, maybe not to that extent I'm just saying use whatever you want But it's helpful to make sounds and you can reference that but one other thing that's super helpful So when you do make sounds and this could be also dialogue that it's actually not used in the shot So you have a pantomime shot, but there's the character that has a thought process So you can record that thought process you say out the lines that the character is thinking and you bring that into Maya And then you can use that as internal model on and if you do that you're not rushing through the acting elements You give the character time and time to breathe and time to think and it doesn't feel like it's just something quickly Animating and then the shot is over it gives you just the proper timing of if you are thinking about things and your Processing information maybe it's something that you're seeing or something that you're hearing and then reacting to it That gives you just the proper timing because that's what you would do Of course on top of that you would stylize it give it some caricature and just push it But as a base form of timing and just for help I think this is something that is really really underused in shots by students so imagine your character is sitting and See someone far away, maybe don't see that well without glasses on and have glasses on and Slowly they realize that's the person they're waiting for or someone that they're recognizing and then they react to that So you could do something where you film yourself and your character is kind of looking No, it's a nice looking bird flying around there. Who's that weird that looks familiar? I know that face Oh, wait, I think I know. Hey, oh, yeah, that's that guy. I know that guy totally random But this could work and you bring this into Maya and you have your reference points of when the character is thinking seeing something Reacting to this putting things together realizing. Oh wait. I know this face. Yes. This is someone I know Oh, I want to say hi to this person because I know that person and you have all those steps there in your sound file And you look at your wave cues you can take notes and everything but at least it's there So you don't just do the animation based on nothing so to recap you can use a sound in a simple Whereby you just make the sounds over and over and over so you're familiar with the timing because you've done this over and over You know when someone Falls it goes away what and you have that oh hey what like that Maybe that could be your head moving okay? Well what like that is the timing you kind of want to stick with or punches or spaceships flying by and Or you're gonna be a bit more detailed and then bring that into your animation So you know when the swooshes are and the peep you hits or head turn or a laughter or a punch Whatever it is or you go one step further when you have a pentamima where there is no actual audio But you record the thought process of the character thinking and going through all those steps of what is this? Oh, I know what this is and I'm reacting to it all that you can record bring into Maya use as a reference point At least as a starting point and you can build on that of course You're gonna go through reviews and critiques and it's gonna build and build and build but at least as a foundation for Timing that is solid and that you can reference so that the animation is not completely wrong when you should for the first time as your animation First pass blocking and I urge my students to do this I'm not sure how many are doing it and maybe you are maybe you are doing it already So let me know in the comments Let me know if that's something that you've tried or your comments that yeah I did this but I changed something and I added this to make this better. Whatever you do if this is familiar Let me know let me know in the comments that could be very interesting to see if you've used this if you build on top of that And that's it. That is my FNA for making sounds as reference for your blocking timing quick and easy Whatever you want to use to keep that timing really really tight so that your first pass blocking is not confusing an emotional point An acting point is clear for presentation as always if you watch this whole thing until the very end I thank you very much and hit like and subscribe and hit that bell button for all notifications for all my critiques and Uploads and FNAs and acting analysis so you get all the notifications You know what I mean and I will see you next week