Lip Sync Animation 2

It was 1927 when Warner Bros. released the first live action film, "The Jazz Singer" and introduced audiences to sound in the form of "talking pictures". And in the Summer of 1928, Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" was the first to introduced audiences to lip sync sound, sound effects and music in an animated cartoon.

Lip sync animation is something that takes a little time to master and their are a variety of books that mention how this is accomplished. Here is a great link to more about the history of sound in animation. 

For this post, i would like to take you step by step through the process and give you some tips along the way.

Here's a Lip Sync Chart of the Mouth positions and what sounds each mouth can make.

This character's closed mouth would be an "A" mouth, which would be a closed smile with lips, no teeth. In this scene, the character never used an "A" mouth, since she was always smiling with her teeth. Below you can see her mouth positions.

 

Before you begin reading your sound track, you need to determine your character's mouth positions will work. This would be a model sheet showing the various mouth positions.

 

Before you start animating a character, you need to create a series of modelsheets showing the character in various positions, etc. Check this previous post all about modelsheets. 

Using the mouth positions modelsheet will help you determine what mouth to animate once you have filled out your X sheet. The mouth positions should have both happy, sad or angry mouths. These modelsheets make sure everyone is drawing the character's mouth expression in the same way.

I have given a few demos about how to "read" or breakdown a sound track and its like watching someone knit a sweater. By the time I finish showing the process, I ask if there are any questions and no one does. I feel like this something the students need to do on their own, make mistakes and learn from them.

Here's a way to set up a lip sync scene where you are placing the mouth positions on top of the rest of the character's head. 

 

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About Modelsheets

Back in the days of 2D animation, the modelsheet was a way of showing what the character looked like, so that every animator would know how to draw it "On Model". There are a variety of modelsheets to choose from, everything from Construction, Turnarounds, Body poses, Expressions, Size comparisons, etc. Below are examples of these different formats.

Construction Modelsheets: Show how the character is built from simple shapes and how many heads tall it is as a form of measurement. The famous Fleischer characters below shows this, but also combine facial expressions and slight turnaround poses.

I think the Popeye modelsheet below was done later since his head is measured differently making him only 5 heads tall, rather than the above showing him at 6 1/2 heads tall.

The above images came from Leslie Cabarga's great book " The Fleischer Story". It has a lot of nice artwork from the golden age of animation and tells the history of the Fleischer Studios.

 

Here's some more Construction modelsheets from Animaniacs, with both front and back views. You can see exactly what shapes are used to build up these characters, making it easier to learn how to draw them correctly.

 

Do you notice anything missing from the above models of the characters? I'll give you a hint, something is missing from Yakko and Wakko's faces in these designs. Can you guess what it is?

Here's a construction model of one of my favorite characters, Slappy Squirrel.

Construction Modelsheets also should contain written instructions or notes to help draw all the design's details. Here's a side view of SpongeBob Squarepants...

One of my first scenes to animate was from a Slappy Squirrel episode where Slappy was in court and being confronted by a lawyer named Stephen Wolf. In this case, the character was only used in one episode and we were given only one modelsheet. The Lead Animator had to figure out how the character was drawn, so the Assistant Animators would know the correct way how to draw the character . Below is the original turnaround modelsheet of this character.

Here's a construction model and the easiest way to draw it...

There are a few notes explaining how to draw this character. The Lead Animator treated the character as a "skinny guy in a big suit". Here is a construction drawing of a rough turnaround of the Wolf's head...

Expression Modelsheets are used when showing how the character should look in different emotional states or poses. These can be made from actual scenes in production when the character design has been established, can be either full body poses or facial expressions. Here are a variety of expression modelsheets...

Comparison Modelsheets are used for comparing the sizes of different characters in a cast.

 

And so, did you ever figure out what facial feature was missing from the Animaniac Construction modelsheet?

Yakko and Wacko started off clean shaven with smooth faces and in a very interesting blog by Rob Lammle, you'll learn why they were given whiskers on their cheeks. It was to avoid any confusion to a very, well known mouse who lives down the street from Warner Bros. 

Another good source for model sheets and background art is Living Lines Library. If you know of any others, please let me know.