Tips on Picking Audio for a Dialogue Animation
Here is just a few tips I have picked up over the years to find better audio clips for dialogue animation work for reel . Hope this helps.

Things to look for in audio1.keep it to one person for the first few
2.has a clear change in attitude in the clip to give more thought process to your character
3.no laugh track , music or noise in the background
4.pick it from a movie you have never been to
5.no profanity why limit where you can show it.
6.Don't use a movie alot of people have seen that know the actor like the godfather for example.
7.Look for contrast in the dialogue not all screaming so the character has somewhere to go with the performance
8.Make sure their are moments where their is no dialogue to give time in your animation for your character to think. Animating in the pauses is the juciest bits! YAY!
9.Look for audio clips, which have a few seconds of silence in it are great, because during that time you are not "stuck" with the dialogue/monologue, you can do your own thing.
10. Make sure the clip does not cut off short or fade away. This is super distracting on a reel.
11.Don't use any clip that has exposition in it. That means a character explaining something, like an evil plan or something like that. It's like reading a manual, there's not a lot of thinking involved, or conflict, or contrast
12.Pick a clip in english so you and your viewer can understand it.
13.Don't pick a clip from any already animated.
14. Don't use any famous actors, especially comedians, like Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, etc. If you choose a sound clip that's well known (like anything from "Office Space"), then people will think about that movie and the actors that say the line, not the character that you are animating. They already have an image of how the character should act, based on the real life actor. You don't want your character being compared to the voice actor, you character needs to stand on its own


Great Places for Audio Clips
Moviewavs | http://www.moviewavs.com/
Movieclips | http://www.movieclips.com/
The Daily.wav | http://www.dailywav.com
What's the scuttlebutt | http://www.whatsthescuttlebutt.com/
Moviesoundclips.net | http://www.moviesoundclips.net/movies.php
soundboard | http://www.soundboard.com/category/Movies.aspx
The Movie Sounds Page | http://www.moviesounds.com/
WavCentral.com | http://wavcentral.com/movies.htm
Listen to a Movie | http://www.listentoamovie.com/
Sounddobs | http://www.sounddogs.com

Workflow-Jeff Gabor

Work Flow ~Jeff Gabor
This is a post from Jeff Gabor talking about work flow and the importance of consistency when animating. I found that workflow is a very personal and the more you try other workflows it helps to use parts of others wonderful techniques.

Super Thank you to Mr.Gabor!
____________________________________________________________________
Here's a workflow outline I did for a few of the animators at Blue Sky a couple years ago:
I go through a very consistent pattern in going through a shot.
Watch, Listen, Think and Ask, Act, Record, Edit, Block, Spline, Polish. (WLTAAREBSP for short)

Watch –

1.Watching the boards several times trying to note the work others have done is always my first step.

Listen -
1.I love to loop the audio several times just to make sure I can hear each beat or clue.

Think and Ask -

1.For dialogue I listen to the beats, note the ups and downs, apply emotions and intent to the tone of the voices, and if there is time I love to involve set pieces or props.

2. Action shots are a bit different. To me action shots are begging to be unique. I ask myself what “new” thing can I add or combine? What action would surprise the audience? This is where asking fellow animator's is most useful.

Act -

1. Once I have a group of thoughts or ideas it's mirror time!
2. My first acting attempts I try to leave loose and natural and let new quirks or gestures come in randomly.
3. I'll take note of the changes and write down each of the quirks.
4. Eventually, I'll make a tree branch of different scenarios for the acting choices.

Record -

1. I don't think there has been a shot yet where I didn't pull out the camera for something.
2. My drawings don't show me poses very well, so I work them out on camera and then caricature them in 3D. I use thumbnails specifically for broad actions.
3. For action shots or tasks that have delicate movement that I just can't seem to remember how to do them in real time, I'll act it out in slow motion and speed it up later.

Edit -

1. I capture the material in Premiere and layout the selected takes, and one by one weed out clips 'til I have single good clip.
2.If there are parts from one clip I like over another I'll edit the two together, but the idea is to get a single reference clip to export so my idea is concrete.
3. For action shots I almost always speed up my reference, at least a bit.

Blocking -

1. I use my reference to pick out all the main storytelling poses and do my best to run through the entire animation without any detail work.
2. I ask myself several question in order to know how to precede.
What's the attention on?
What's driving what?
How much time do I have?

3. I start by blocking out the main character or speaker, but in the case of extreme object dependent shots (ie. Scrat Flipping shots) Objects take precedence over characters.

4. For the flipping or vaulting sequences I did, I found it far easier to work out all the beats animating the driving object first. Not just blocking it, but going straight to splining it.

5. I often find it easier to work out timing ahead of poses. Sometimes I'll have a bouncing ball or square animated and fully splined to determine my timing before heading to my character's poses.
6. The “how much time do a I have” basically tells me how much blocking I can afford to hide before showing a supervisor. If I can get a way with it, I'll hide my blocking work until I have got through the entire animation once, then go back to add 1-3 breakdowns per key frame to demonstrate the movement.

Conscious Blocking
1. When I block I'm very conscious of how this will spline. I add my keys for holds that sups won't see but will be notes to me on how long poses hold.

ex. I have a pose at 101 and new one at 130. I know I want 101 to hold until 125, so in blocking I'll take the time to put that key down now so I won't forget during splining.

2. OverBlocking
Thanks to Hans' Vulture work on IA2, I now “over-block” my shots. I generally make it a rule to have a new pose fully worked out every 3-5 frames during motions.

The idea is that there isn't a single un-answered question or confusing part about the motion to be “explored” in splining.

3.Facial Blocking

I feel like to sell a shot to a director over blocking the dialogue helps a ton. While talking I usually make a new facial pose every 5 frames and add one inbetween afterwards. I like the toolbox but never just plug and play.

4.Hitting Early
I usually like to see how early I can hit a shape before it actually makes the sound when doing dialogue. I love it when a sup says, “I think you may be too early on that shape,” as opposed to, “it's hitting late.”

Splining-Ahhhh, sleepy time. If I did my blocking right I get to turn my movie up and turn off my brain. Specifically, I work 15-30 frames at a time starting from the beginning. I work from the inside of the body out. Hips, Spine, Legs, Head, Arms, Toes/Fingers, and then face.
I rarely actually grab tangents and move them around any more. I simply grab keys and hit my short-cut for autotan/autoconv to set up all my moving holds and eases.

Polish-This usually means asking fellow animator's what I could to do to finish up the shot. By this time I've lost my eye for the actual motion so I'll often flip my flipper horizontally to check my motion but I do this sparingly so I don't get used to the flipped image as well. I almost never leave a flipped image looping cause I loose my eye for it quickly.

Mel scripts for Animation

Mel Scripts for Animation

1.cmotiontrail
2.ShotView
3.PoseMan
4.Aaron Koressel Mel Scripts
5.SuperCrumbly Mel Scripts
6.abxpicker
7.Arc Tracker

Setting up Hotkeys and Melscripts for Maya

Philosphy on Tools for Animation

Rigging Reference

Rigging Links
Rigging 101
Jason Schefler animator friendly rigging
JOHN DOUBLESTEIN JTD Rigging Tools

AutoRigs
Automated Animation friendly auto rig
Rigomatic
The setup machine

Rigging and Modeling

Rigging Dojo presents: Anatomy for rigging and modeling with Jeff Hesser

Facial Rigging with Blendshapes
Jason Osipa "Stop Staring Book on Facial Modeling and Rigging"

Splining Oh My

Splinning or Blocking Plus is where alot of cg animation goes to the dark side. Here are a few of my tips and links to places to get more help.

1.First make sure you have enough poses..alot of time I loose the weight or the arc because there was never a pose or breakdown for it. If it is not there..it is not there.
2.Clean up your curves right after you convert or use the magical "Auto Tangent"

3.Check your animation against the 12 principles

4.keep holds alive...



Links to check out
Victor Narvone tutorials

Nick Bruno's Tips

Blocking Tips and Tricks

Blocking to me is the fun part and the foundation of good animation. It is important to try different workflows for blocking til you find what works for you and the animation you are doing. Here are some links that I will continue to post and update.

Great articles on Blocking

How many types of blocking by Shawn Kelly

"The Fear of Leaving Blocking"

Jason Schefler article