All images from Inspired 3D: 3D Character Animation by Kyle Clark, series edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford. Reprinted with permission.

This is the next in a number of adaptations from the new Inspired series published by Premier Press. Comprised of four titles and edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford, these books are designed to provide animators and curious moviegoers with tips and tricks from Hollywood veterans.

Lip-Sync Animation
The single best investment you can have when animating lip-sync is a mirror. Watch yourself talking naturally—not the goofy-faced, play-acting, over-exaggerated face antics you think you should do, but the natural flowing conversation of everyday speech. Watch how your mouth shifts over sounds, seemingly skipping sounds altogether. This simple act of watching and learning how a mouth moves during speech can yield great results. It’s all about observation and the incorporation of what you see into what you animate. Watch video reference and news anchors doing their nightly reports. Observe how wide and varied the mouth and face can become during speech and how much is skimmed over in pronunciation.

Interpretation
The key element in good lip-sync animation is to grasp the essential elements of the communication as recorded in the sound track. You need to “squint your ears” and try to pick up the overall feel of the speech rather than a slavish interpretation of what you think you hear in the dialogue. I call this a kind of Impressionism, having been inspired by the Impressionist movement of the late 1800s.

For many years, up until the late 19th century, the effort in Renaissance art was the meticulous and accurate re- creation of reality in every fine detail. Realism was the goal, and literalism in interpreting a painting was the norm. Then, artists got an idea about capturing the overall essence of an image. They became less interested in capturing every leaf on a tree and began to focus on how the light, shadow and color hues projected that tree into another realm. In this new interpretive realm, leaves didn’t matter as much as form, color, tone and contrast. Just as the Impressionist painters got away from a literal realism in capturing a picture, animators need to become impressionistic when it comes to lip- sync animation. The best place to start is with the broad strokes of your “brush,” to get blocked in the very foundation of your work. The best way to do this is to nail down your mouth open and close timings.

Open or Closed?
When you begin a lip-sync task, seek at first to do nothing more than hit the primary mouth opens and closes. By focusing on this basic need, you can get nearly all you need for lip-sync. Heck, the Muppets have gotten by on that for 30-plus years! These main target points are like the broad brushes in an Impressionist painting. They define shape, contrast, form and direction. The details of texture come later with the specific choices you make on top of the broad brushed open and closed pose shapes and timings.

The opens and closes are the foundation of your more specific choices. Even if all you do is properly hit the opens, closes, and wide shapes of the mouth at the right time, you are already more than 75% of the way to great lip-sync. You can get a lot out of very little lip-sync animation. If you have any doubts about this, take a look at animated films using projected texture map mouths, such as those in VeggieTales, which have proven that this is indeed true.

Literalism Versus Impressionism: A Case Study
In the film Mouse Hunt, Christopher Walken’s character is mumbling about getting into the mouse’s head. In this rambling, he says (in a rather understated fashion) that “you hafta get” inside the mouse’s mind. “You hafta get” takes about 25 frames to say. At first look, it literally seems like there should be the following keys for the phrase:
Y (a pucker shape)
Ooo
H
Aa
V
T
Uh
G
Eh
T

That is a very literal interpretation of what it takes to show a person saying, “you hafta get.” However, if you keyframe the lip-sync in that manner, this will result in a very poppy or jerky mouth when animated. Some of those poses will be onscreen for only a single frame, which is entirely too much information and not enough time for the viewer to interpret it.