Whats the best way to do lip-sync?

[slowtiger]

Well, but who's going to use that? I don't get the impression there's a big demand of animation in classical disney style when I watch TV or web recently. I even had a job appointment last week where the french director explicitely told us "we don't want overlap or secondary action. We want it fast and hard, animation for adults."

[mkelley]

Vern's technique, as I understand it, uses bones rather than switch layers, but you can achieve equally smooth interpolation (I do all the time) with layers and the big P.

No bones in that sample.
I did it using switch layers with interpolation to demonstrate changing shape layer order inside a switch layer for creating better phonemes more easily.

-vern

Aha! That's a good tip to know -- I did assume interpolation would require the shape orders to be the same. I've always created my shapes accordingly and, as you point out, a big PITA to squish and hide things as the shapes change. No pun intended, but this changes everything.

As to Slowtiger's point, while he makes it out of anger (I think) it's a pretty valid one for the majority of animation done for TV work here. Lip sync is actually very sloppy even within Disney animated movies (I've mentioned this before, but the otherwise excellent Brad Bird movie, The Incredibles, has some of the worst lip sync work I've ever seen. 3D yes, but no reason for it to be so far off).

Lip sync is an interesting beast -- I noticed recently on one of my shows that the main character kept moving her mouth long after she stopped talking (due to an inadvertent key) and this slipped past me as well as the eight other folks who checked it out. No one saw it because the action in the background (which was *intended* to draw the eye) kept people from noticing it, although her dialog was very important. Still, it goes to show you that there is a lot of things you can get away with, both intentional and not, when it comes to sync.

[Rasheed]

Lip sync is an interesting beast -- I noticed recently on one of my shows that the main character kept moving her mouth long after she stopped talking (due to an inadvertent key) and this slipped past me as well as the eight other folks who checked it out. No one saw it because the action in the background (which was *intended* to draw the eye) kept people from noticing it, although her dialog was very important. Still, it goes to show you that there is a lot of things you can get away with, both intentional and not, when it comes to sync.

That was exactly the point I was making earlier. If you do your lip syncing too literal, it will draw away from the action. Therefore, you mostly want to do it in a subdued manner (or, as you call it, sloppy manner).

IMHO 50 percent or more of the lip sync is good voice work anyway. You probably will be more effective with good body acting than with precise lip synchronization.

[Rasheed]

BTW I guess little chance we'll see this kind of animation with Anime Studio any time soon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_jsyzbiBNY