Lip sync (making the mouth shapes match speech) is one of those skills where the more you
do it, the easier it gets. It becomes instinct.
To get started, there are three levels of lip sync you can aim for. I gave them all
dumb names.
Starting at the bottom is The Cheap Anime, a style of lip syncing that doesn’t match
the sound the character is making. All the mouth does is open and close. It is the fastest
and easiest style to do, and because it’s so minimal and imprecise you can actually
animate the mouths before adding in the voice acting lines. I don’t recommend you do that,
but you could if you wanted to.
Here is how you animate Cheap Anime mouths. Listen to the voice actor’s line, draw an
open mouth shape that fits the tone of their speech. A big wide mouth if they are loud,
a small mouth if they’re quiet, an exaggerated or unique mouth if the acting for the line
stands out.
Now make two or three other mouth shapes related to the one you just did. A closed one and
one in between the open mouth and closed mouth, for example. I’m going to make one more
shape. Great. Now, as the character talks, you can either let the mouth run on a basic
open/closed pattern, or you can individually add in whichever shape makes sense.
Make sure you are letting each shape show for more than one frame. This is truly the
secret to good lip syncing: don’t change the mouth every frame. I usually change shape
every two frames. If I do every frame, the mouth doesn’t look very lifelike because
it’s too smooth, or it moves too fast and you can’t read the lips, so to speak.
There are some exceptions to the rule at Typical Cartoon level lip sync, but it takes practice
before you start to get the feel for when you can put mouth shapes on every frame, like
at the end of the sentence moving the mouth to a resting position, or for drawn out words
like Oooooh and Aaaaaaaah.
Let’s do Typical Cartoon lip sync now. This is what you see in most contemporary cartoons
on the TV or on the internet. Most of these are puppet mouths, so they are a complete
set of mouth shapes that you can reuse on the character. Most of the time multiple characters
use the same mouth. It makes lip sync much more efficient.
This chart shows the standard mouth shapes I make for talking characters. You can get
away with less than this. Here, I’ll dim out the bonus shapes. Talking with just these
shapes will look okay, but somewhat stiff. That’s why I have a set of mouths that is
not as wide as the default. Some words I use the thin mouths for and some I use the wide
mouths. The variety keeps the lip sync from looking like Cheap Anime.
You can always make more shapes with these puppet mouths, like shapes that help you transition
from a little O to a big wide A.
I put my mouth set into a symbol and use an extension that I installed into Adobe Animate
to pick out mouth shapes as I listen to the dialogue. Keyframe Caddy is the extension
most people use. Before I found out about extensions, I used to keep all of the mouth
shapes at the tail end of the animation and copy paste the correct one as I went along,
so you can do it that way too.
If the character’s head moves, reposition the mouth. You’ll need to design a new set
of mouths for the front versus side view, but other than that you can fudge anything
in between (like ⅞ or ¾) with front or side views. Pretty simple.
Again, figuring out what shape to use takes practice. If you are new to lip syncing, I
suggest listening for defining sounds like O, TH, V, B, W, L, and making sure those have
the right shape. Pretty much anything else you can use a regular open or closed mouth
for. Another tip is to say the phrase yourself and pay attention to how your mouth moves.
I usually say words to myself in slow motion and exaggerate the shape of my mouth so I
know how it should look.
Some people do choose to do Typical Cartoon lip sync but redraw the mouth each time. Sometimes
you redraw everything because your program doesn’t let you make puppet pieces. Other
than that excuse, hand animating Typical Cartoon lip sync is a lot of work and not really worth
it in my opinion. For an average quality animation you’re better off saving time and money
by making puppet mouths.
Mouth Master lip sync involves more than just the mouth. First, you need to redraw the mouth
every time. Each mouth shape is unique and reflects your voice actor’s acting. Second,
your mouth is rarely going to be the only thing moving. For human mouths, the chin will
be affected by how far the mouth is open, and for certain types of acting like the actor
is disgusted, cheeks and this area around the nose will be affected. You should also
be drawing your eyebrows and lids to emphasize the mood. The whole face needs to convey attitude.
You can’t really have a perfectly animated mouth but the rest of the character stay still.
This is how weird that would look.
Mouth Master lip sync is for people who are animating everything by hand and putting acting
into their work. It’s not just talking at this point. It’s about the delivery.
For more tutorials, look for yellow episodes of Scribble Kibble on the YouTube playlist,
or on the official website, or on Vessel. Yes. This show is pretty much everywhere.