Improving my Head skills

[Sailor-taurus]

Hey ya'll! I dunno if any of you will remember me from last year, but i'll skip right to the point.

Last year I tried to do an animation project called Sonic Vegemite Halloween, starring members of the Sonic Vegemite forum. I was only able to get four scenes complete (seeing as I only gave myself two months to do it in, and being completely new to Anime Studio), and these four scenes can be viewed at my YT account:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SailorTaurus

Well, it's 2007 now, and i'm trying to do it again this year, as SVH07. The script is far shorter this time (I was way ahead of myself last time) and with alot less characters. I'm currently trying to improve my techniques in AS to make things both alot easier to make, and alot easier to animate (such as using switch layers for lip syncing this time rather than doing it completely manually myself).

This is my current practise. All info is in the description:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ljaL5Euas

I'm looking for C&C on this, and also asking for some help.

As you might notice in the video, for some reason when the mouth is closed (and moving to open mouth), the 'lips' (outline) are missing and there is a small haze around the mouth (the original decent resolution AVI reveals this haze in in the exact same shape as the shapes hidden behing the lips shape). The closed mouth was created from the open mouth and looks fine in preview mode. Why am I getting this problem and how do I solve it.

If it ends up being required, I will upload the project file here for inspection.

[Genete]

Regarding to the character I suppose that you are WIP with the eyes. They hurts!

Regarding to the lips outline missing: Are you using any kind of layer depth sort? Do the outline belong to lips shape or it is an independent shape? can you make a close up of the mouth only?

It is rare.

-G

[Sailor-taurus]

I am using depth sort (I had head rotation in mind), but the lips are part of an actual object that covers everything behind it.

And what's wrong with my eyes?

[Sailor-taurus]

Alright, i'm sorry for the double post but it's not exactly anything useless.

I've been working on my first complete model for this little project, based on one of our members, Dagger.

Currently she has a fully working mouth, dynamic hair strands and one face turn action.

This video is testing the mouth, and was made before implamenting the head turn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LFWANpFv2E

This video was made after completing the mouth and adding the head turn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxvb2cDGvkM