Study Task 2: Talk This Way

We were taught how to lip sync by making a phoenome mouth chart and planning the placement of the keyframes through use of a dope sheet before using After Effects to actually do it.

The dope sheet planning

My phoenome 'cheat sheet'

This was the resulting animation (I used my Captain Flintlock character from last year!):

What I learned:

• Certain mouth positions can be shared for multiple sounds
• How to lip sync by using time mapping in After Effects
• Using a dope sheet works well to give a general idea of where to put the keyframes but I personally needed to edit the positioning of the keyframes quite a bit in After Effects

What worked well:

• Using time remapping in After Effects made lip syncing much easier than traditionally drawing it frame by frame
• Offsetting the frames one or two frames before the start of the sound

What could be improved:

• I could have planned out the keyframes on the dope sheet a bit better
• I feel that an extra tween phoenome might have made parts of the lip syncing smoother
• Only lips were required for this task but as I added a background, I will keep in mind that for future reference I might need to move other parts of the face like the cheeks and chin to make the lip movement look more natural.