The lip sync tutorial they DONāT give you
I mentioned on twitter that I wanted to do a lip sync tutorial and immediately got some people who were interested so I put one together real quick!
Iām going to use a bit of unfinished lip sync from my taz animated part as reference. Theyāre just gifs so no sound, but you should still be able to tell that heās saying āIād say a solid B⦠Solid B minus.ā
Anyone whoās looked up how to do lip sync has seen phoneme charts. Phonemes are just the shape your mouth makes when you make certain sounds.
When you do lip sync, you want some kind of reference to make sure itās right
Whatās easiest is to say it yourself and pay attention to the shapes your mouth is making. Since youāre going frame by frame, your audio is slow enough that you can make each shape slowly and distinctly and you can get each individual phoneme down in the animation.
Donāt do this.^
An easy way to tell if youāre animating lip sync wrong is if you run out of frames to make each shape. You donāt need them! Making each shape is unnatural. People talk quickly and the mouth doesnāt have the time to get into each shape. They blend together, sometimes to the point where the shape doesnāt change at all!
Not only does the 2nd gif take less frames and energy to make, itās more relaxed, it looks less distracting, and his lips are much easier to read!
These are reference charts to show the differences more clearly
This is the difference between getting swallowed up in every last detail and paying attention to reality.
What matters more than hitting every syllable is making it look natural and flow with the acting. Thatās why anime mouth flaps can work so well. A strong pose through the whole body matters more than one mouth shape.











