Move Chin with Phoneme

[FloridaJo]

Okay, so I'm relearning Moho and on Chad's animating character tut and at one point he
says you can change the facial expression (ie chin movement) with each phoneme.
Unfortunately he doesn't say how.
How would one change points on another vector layer (change chin on face layer) when switching between mouth phoneme layers?

Thanks in advance.

[synthsin75]

Some people make the chin/lower face part of the switch phonemes, some use smart bones for their phonemes, so they can control facial point motion with them too.

[FloridaJo]

Some people make the chin/lower face part of the switch phonemes, some use smart bones for their phonemes, so they can control facial point motion with them too.

I see.
I wasn't sure if a switch layer could drive another layer.

So to include the chin with the phoneme layer, I'm thinking one would hide the edge of the face, and copy-paste that edge into
the mouth phoneme group (or folder). Is this right?

Thanks

[Greenlaw]

When I need to, I animate the chin as secondary animation, after I've completed the lip-sync itself. This is because I'm likely to squash/stretch the mouth switch group or otherwise edit the mouth shape/size (usually directly with the Magnet tool or predefined 'expressions' using an SBD), and this affects how much to move the jaw.

I typically animate the jaw with an SBD control, but it depends on the character design. With some characters, it can be easier or more expressive to stretch or swing a 'jaw' bone directly.

As Wes noted, you might alternatively include posed jaw itself inside the Switch, but this will probably mean making a lot more mouth drawings, or using nested switches for different emotions/expressions. IMO, that's too much work, but it might be practical for certain character designs and animation styles.

At work, many characters I've animated have such round heads, I can get away with not animating the chin.

[synthsin75]

There are scripts that could have a phoneme switch layer control a face switch layer, but you can also do that with reference layers. As long as the switch sublayers have the same names, you can change their contents, so the reference could have the lower face. Then switching the phoneme switch automatically switches the reference lower face switch. Or just add the lower face to the phoneme layers themselves.

Yeah, you can just split the face and paste the lower half into your phoneme layers.


As Dennis implies, this is likely more useful on simpler characters. As with everything in animation, it all depends on what you need it to do.

[FloridaJo]

There are scripts that could have a phoneme switch layer control a face switch layer, but you can also do that with reference layers. As long as the switch sublayers have the same names, you can change their contents, so the reference could have the lower face. Then switching the phoneme switch automatically switches the reference lower face switch. Or just add the lower face to the phoneme layers themselves.

Yeah, you can just split the face and paste the lower half into your phoneme layers.


As Dennis implies, this is likely more useful on simpler characters. As with everything in animation, it all depends on what you need it to do.

I see. I'll read up on reference layers.
Thanks

[Greenlaw]

Oh, something I forgot to mention: another reason I animate the mouth and jaw/chin separately is I can animate that bit smoothly with very little effort. This small 'secondary' animation makes it less obvious that my mouth animation is not blending smoothly at all. Also, the additional squash and stretch I apply to the Mouth Switch layer can also make the 'steppy' mouth animation appear smoother. (You can see examples on my demo reels)

These are easy little cheats that help lipsync look smoother and more complicated than it really is.

[FloridaJo]

Oh, something I forgot to mention: another reason I animate the mouth and jaw/chin separately is I can animate that bit smoothly with very little effort. This small 'secondary' animation makes it less obvious that my mouth animation is not blending smoothly at all. Also, the additional squash and stretch I apply to the Mouth Switch layer can also make the 'steppy' mouth animation appear smoother. (You can see examples on my demo reels)

These are easy little cheats that help lipsync look smoother and more complicated than it really is.

Is this because you are not using 'interpolate' switch layers?

[Greenlaw]

It depends on the look you're going for. For the broad cartoon style we do at my workplace, I avoid using interpolation for lip sync because it tends to make the mouth kinda 'squishy, losing definition in the mouth poses. IMO, a little bit of 'snappiness' isn't necessarily a bad thing for this style.

That said, I did use Switch Layer Interpolation mode to animate facial expressions for the 'granny biker' character from Boss Baby seen on my 2019 demo reel. I think it worked really well in this situation, but I didn't use it for lip sync.

Not that there's anything wrong with using Interpolation for lip sync; it's just not the right look for our animations.

[FloridaJo]

It depends on the look you're going for. For the broad cartoon style we do at my workplace, I avoid using interpolation for lip sync because it tends to make the mouth kinda 'squishy, losing definition in the mouth poses. IMO, a little bit of 'snappiness' isn't necessarily a bad thing for this style.

That said, I did use Switch Layer Interpolation mode to animate facial expressions for the 'granny biker' character from Boss Baby seen on my 2019 demo reel. I think it worked really well in this situation, but I didn't use it for lip sync.

Not that there's anything wrong with using Interpolation for lip sync; it's just not the right look for our animations.

I see. Yes, I sometimes see too 'squishy' animations where snappier would have been better.
Like you say, it depends what you're going for.
One of my favorite cartoons is on YouTube called Grickle.
Very snappy, no interpolation and at times animating on '7's' lol. But the style is so good and the storylines so good it overtakes the crude animation.
Crude but very much setting the mood, which should be an animators first goal I would think.

[Greenlaw]

Re: Grickle, thanks for pointing me to this series! I watched a few episodes this morning and it's pretty funny. The style reminds me of old Jay Ward cartoons, but a lot more twisted. And yeah, they really lean into that 'steppy' look...and it looks great!

[FloridaJo]

Re: Grickle, thanks for pointing me to this series! I watched a few episodes this morning and it's pretty funny. The style reminds me of old Jay Ward cartoons, but a lot more twisted. And yeah, they really lean into that 'steppy' look...and it looks great!

I'll mention one more, maybe you've seen him, but I wish he would animate more.
https://www.youtube.com/user/joecartoondotcom/videos

[Greenlaw]

Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with Joe Cartoon! I used to follow his Flash stuff in the late 90's and early 00's. Glad to see he's still animating.