Lip Syncing

This is a tool which is created in order to give instruction on character movement, camera angle, script, camera position, focus and also timeline. To describe it simply, it is rather like a comic form of the animation. It is simply drawn and helps with the planning of the animation once the initial concept has been formed.

It can come in various forms. I drew pencil on paper so that I could easily alter, also drew very basic forms of my characters as it was just an aid to filming and had no aesthetic value. I have read that some animators will draw it out on index cards which can then be moved around to alter the story line if desired. It doesn’t have to be drawn, computers can be used or photographs also images from magazines. My Storyboards can be seen in posts “Bow and Arrow” and my “Final Piece”. I discovered “Storyboard Language”  these are universal terms which are used in Storyboarding and it was actually very useful to read through and consider how my animation was going to look, could I incorporate some of the techniques to enhance my animations?

CLOSE-UP SHOT:   A close range of distance between the camera and the subject.

DISSOVLE: A transition between two shots, where one shot fades away and simultaneously another shot fades in.

FADE - A transition from a shot to black where the image gradually becomes darker is a Fade Out; or from black where the image gradually becomes brighter is a Fade In.

HIGH CAMERA ANGLE:  A camera angle which looks down on its subject making it look small, weak or unimportant.

JUMP CUT: A rapid, jerky transition from one frame to the next, either disrupting the flow of time or movement within a scene or making an abrupt transition from one scene to another.

LEVEL CAMERA ANGLE:  A camera angle which is even with the subject; it may be used as a neutral shot.

LONG SHOT:  A long range of distance between the camera and the subject, often providing a broader range of the setting.

LOW CAMERA ANGLE:  A camera angle which looks up at its subject; it makes the subject seem important and powerful.

PAN:  A steady, sweeping movement from one point in a scene to another.

POV (point of view shot): A shot which is understood to be seen from the point of view of a character within the scene.

REACTION SHOT- 1.: A shot of someone looking off screen. 2.: A reaction shot can also be a shot of someone in a conversation where they are not given a line of dialogue but are just listening to the other person speak.

TILT:  Using a camera on a tripod, the camera moves up or down to follow the action.

ZOOM:  Use of the camera lens to move closely towards the subject.

Lip Sync

In amination this is the art of having the character’s mouth move at the right speed and into the right shapes in tandem with pre-recorded dialogue in order to give the impression of them speaking. Phenomes are the smallest units of sound that make up the spoken language and are often referred to as “the building blocks of speech”. Phenomes are blurred together into patters to create words which run together into sentences – our brains then separate them into words to understand. English has 42-45 basic phenomes – depending on the accent of the person speaking. When Lip Syncing in animation it is easiest to represent the phenomes by using alphabetical combinations. As you can see from the images, the mouth, tongue and lips create different shapes as they say these different sounds.

Not every part of a word need be represented, lip syncing can just show part or parts of some words and the viewers’ brain will fill in the rest. Often the beginning and ends of words will be sufficient for effect.  Also, the very simplest form of lip syncing is to simply open and close the mouth rather like a glove puppet is made to speak. A believable representation of speech can be created by using approximately 8-10 different mouth shapes. Each mouth shape needs to generally last 2 frames, less than this and the mouth can seem too busy – but you may want this if the character is talking fast. As I mentioned earlier, the viewers eye can fill things in but also to incorporate body language rather than just having a talking head can emphasise dialogue. From the storyboard a series of poses can be worked on and developed so that the body language can work well with the speech - these further drawings are sometimes referred to as dope sheets where facial expressions, poses and words or phrases are matched up.