NOTES

Early in the world’s first animation film with sound, lip sync involved in the character animation. We were all deeply impressed by the shot of Mickey Mouse whistling in the Steamboat Wille.

Remember: lip sync animation is NOT only animating the mouth. Dialogue occurs along with body language and facial expressions.

We animate to the sound, not the words and letters. There is difference depending on language and mood. So capture how people speak and act it rather than how it’s written.

Here are two student animation films that basically consist of character dialogue, and nearly share the same scene: the backstage. I especially noticed their lip sync animation. The first one did a very typical cartoonic lip sync, with clear mouth movements and active facial expressions.

In the second one, the character acting is not very exaggerated, but natural and introverted. For both of the films, the lip sync works.

ASSIGNMENT: EXERCISE 1

I teamed up with Kaori. She remind me of Tomoyo chan in Card Capter Sakura, so I choose this character to animate. Video record gave us a better understanding of the state of the character as he or she spoke.

Initially I animated the body and lip sync separately to reduce mistakes.

Then add follow through to the hair and lip sync to the face. At last I fixed the timing.

ASSIGNMENT: EXERCISE 2

For this exercise I decided to animate this famous scene from Harry Potter.

Care should be taken that the acting follows the speaking. It’s supposed to make audiences pay more attention on what the character says rather than being distracted too much by the body acting.