LIP-SYNC - INTRODUCTION

In this session, we started on our lip-sync project!

Lip-sync in animation is where you make a character's mouth movements match up with what audible dialogue is coming out. By using various different mouth shapes, you can create believable talking animation.

This session was headed by Katherine Dallimore, a NUA graduate who now runs the YouTube channel KDSketch, where she uploads storytime videos (in the same style as JaidenAnimations and TheOdd1sOut) and TVPaint tutorials.

(A storytime video uploaded to the KDSketch channel - credit: Katherine Dallimore)

For our lip-sync animation, we would be working in 2D using TVPaint; something I was VERY happy about, seeing as 2D is my preferred animation style and it'd been 4 months since last doing it. Katherine was well versed in TVPaint as well, and given her expertise with the program, she said she'd be able to help out where she can.

The first step was choosing our audio. We were given two audio clips to choose from, one from the movie Hot Fuzz and one from The Tick live action show. I chose the audio from The Tick, in which a character exclaims about a crime lab, how thorough & complicated it is, and how he likes when sidekicks have "ideas [and] theories". 

We had a few set rules with the animation:

• Simple character design, as to not be too precious with a very small animation
• Only shoot from the shoulders up, no hand movements or body gestures allowed
• Express only with what you have; shoulders, head and face
• The chin should move as the mouth does
• White background
• No cuts

We were also given mirrors to try and see what shape our mouths make when pronouncing certain sounds. I didn't think I personally needed the mirror too much. I had gotten my own style of lip-sync when creating my own animations, which involves using less mouth shapes and using certain ones in the right places to make believable movements that fit my style.

Katherine also taught us how to make an animbrush to hold all our mouth shapes. An animbrush is similar to a symbol in Flash, they act as containers of sorts to hold lots of different drawings. The animbrush for the mouths would let us go through frame by frame choosing each mouth shape we want and placing it onto the frame.

(The KDSketch tutorial on animbrushes - credit: Katherine Dallimore)

I started with the first thing I would do with any character performance, which is the body movements. It'd be a pain to start with the mouth, then make the body move, and then go back and readjust all the mouths, when I can just move them as I go with a predefined body. I wasn't too precious with the drawings, I didn't try and make them perfect.

From the audio, I got vibes of the one-shot character Mark Deveraux from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and based my character's physical performance on them somewhat. The cockiness and the general lack of knowledge regarding crime work may have been the subconscious connection for me.

(Deveraux, played by Nathan Fillion, plays a detective on a show protagonists Jake and Rosa enjoy - credit: NBCUniversal)

I finished my body movements relatively quickly, so I decided to move on to the eye movements. I really wanted to get the physical performance down, and getting the more emotive parts of the face done felt more important to the performance aspect. 

For this whole animation, I used my cartoony style I've been using since 2013. Over time, it's been tweaked and worked on, mostly out of necessity to work in different mediums (digital illustration, animation, etc.) One of the key changes is the shape of the eyes; where it started out as a circle, the eyes now resemble ovals. I bring this up because having the oval shaped eyes allowed for more extreme and exaggerated eye movements, giving me more room to close eyelids with.

At the end of this session, this is the animation so far:

The next step from here is easy: add a mouth. I've got my own pre-defined mouth shapes all ready, I just need to implement them. This session was a nice return to 2D animation for me, and an interesting return to TVPaint! Time away from the program has definitely helped me in coming back to it without any major "grudges"; essentially, forgetting the tricky experiences prior and trying again! Katherine was a huge help, and she seems really professional with TVPaint.