Lee Skinner: Lip Syncing

ch/j/sh ah q/w

How to Animate Using Lip Sync

He is a brief guide on how to lip sync (animating a mouth so that it moves in time with the dialogue on the soundtrack).

At Queen Alexandra College I worked with a BTEC Sports students to create the following film:

Fit Farm by Laura Marsden, July 2012 (BTEC Sport @QAC)

The production of this film began with Laura interviewing her fellow sports students. She asked each of them to talk about their favourite sports on camera. During this stage the interviewees were completely unaware that Laura intended to replace their image with animated stop-motion animals.

Each interview was edited to find a sound bite (a sentence that would appear humorous if spoken by an animal).

Student 1 spoke about how athletic he was, so it was decided that it would be funny if he could become a large pig, who was clearly not athletic.
Student 2 discussed how dodge ball allows him to take out his aggression, so he became a cute bunny rabbit.
Student 3 recalled the time he broke another player's ankle, so became a creature that not only has no ankles, but would find it very difficult to break the ankle of a fellow player.

After editing the final soundtrack a dope sheet is created:

Each of the sentences spoken by the interviewees were broken down into 12 frames per second. The sound that is made during each 12th of a second is recorded onto the dope sheet so that during animation production (which involves capturing 12 frames for every second of film) the animator knows which sound the character's mouth should appear to be making in each 12th of a second.

This stage can be very difficult as people pronounce words differently. On the dope sheet above you will see that Certain is pronounced sur 'un.

Creating the Models

For each interviewee there needed to be a plasticine model. The models had to have a space where the mouth should be and a series of mouths were needed to express the different sounds used when talking.
During filming, a mouth was inserted into this space to suit the sound that is being made during each 12th of a second.

There are many references that you can use, such as this diagram from 'The Art of Stop-Motion Animation' by Ken Priebe.

Below is the completed snail model with a gap where its mouth should be. Next to it are the 12 mouth shapes it needs to speak. These mouths will be inserted into the gap in its face during filming.

The rabbit and pig with their mouths.

Bringing the models to life

When animating the characters it is very helpful to refer back to the original interview footage and try to imitate or exaggerate the body movements and facial expressions of the interviewees:

Imitating Neo from the Matrix "dodging all the bullets and stuff"