Adventures of a Facial Animator

What the talk is about

Andrey Sibiryakov analyzes his own mistakes in facial animation after a game shipped. He shows a scene from the first hour of play and explains what went wrong: voice, body and face out of sync, flat lighting, unconvincing eye animation, normals that did not update, and a weak wrinkle system. He admits he focused too much on the technical side over the artistic one, worked without a partner, asked colleagues for little advice, and his eye became "blind" to flaws. He then presents his plans: scan every character, build a face constructor that blends ready-made heads via blendshapes, cast actors and poll the team, capture face and eyes together with mocap, and re-record voice to match gestures. Useful for facial animators and technical artists.