The Illusion of Animation

So lately I’ve been working a lot on the first episode of the animation show I’m trying to start. So far it’s just been a pretty simple stuff – it’s more like a motion comic. Motion comics are still images that sort of pan rather then actually move. Sometimes in motion comics, if someone walks, the image of the person just glides across the screen but other times the animators will actually have the legs move and take steps.

The first episode so far is more like a motion comic. There is a short part where you actually see my character talk and something I’ve discovered with setting up audio to the mouth to sync it up is that talking in cartoons is an illusion, just like most things in art. What I mean by that is when you draw a two point perspective, for example, it looks like the image is going back into space but it’s still just on a flat surface. The depth is just an illusion.

Lip syncing is also an illusion.When you watch a cartoon, the character don’t form everything they’re saying like people. There’s no need. All you really need are the major sounds that you hear. When I first started syncing in my animation, I drew out the process of the mouth forming “hi”. I drew the mouth closed, then a litte bit open, then more open, an so on until the mouth was at the max width when pronouncing the “h” in “hi”. I realized that this all was very unnecessary.  Instead, all you really need are the basic sounds. Here’s a mouth chart I used to help me figure out what how to draw the mouth.

(I just used this image as a reference – I feel that these images may over anunicate words and you may just want to watch yourself in a mirror or video tape yourself saying the lines you want your animation to say to see how you should draw the mouths. Like when I say the sound “K” my teeth don’t show like in the above image lol)

All you have to do for the illusion of talking to work is to set your audio with your animation then place the mouth where you hear the sounds. You have to listen carefully!  This mean where ever you hear the M sound, for example, you place the mouth you drew that imitates that sound.

So if you want your character to say “Hello, my name is Lauren” You would place the “E”, “L”, “O” (kind of like saying ” ‘ello” haha) “M”, “E”, “Y”, (the transition from “E” to “Y” will have to be pretty quick”) “N”,  ”A”, “M”, “I”, “S”, “L”, “A”, “R”, “N”. Not all the letters are necessary   – in my name, you have have to put the “U” or “E” mouths in because you won’t notice the mouth skipping them and they’ll probably cause a lag in your animation and you’ll lose sync with your audio most likely.

When I tried to add in all the sounds, it looked like the character was putting in more effort then needed to speak and it didn’t seem to flow. In my experience, less is more when it comes to lip syncing your animation. Now that I took out some mouth movements, the talking seems to flow much smoother and seems to match up better with the audio. Also, it’s important to remember that if in your audio, the person talking holds their “m” sound, for example, you should add in frames so that the “m’ image will last just as long. I also read that setting your audio a couple of frames after your animation will make it look more natural because our mouths make the movements of sounds before the sounds come out. I haven’t tested this theory yet personally but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re stuck with your animation. =)

Hope this post was informative and I hope that my animation will be done soon! I almost finished it the other day but then I realized something….it sucked! lol

Related Blogs