- Partner
I first mapped out the keyframes from the reference video and matched it to the rough audio that my partner had sent me. After doing this, we recorded our audios in the sound room where we got a feel of professional recording.
Before proceeding with the lip-sync, I created the keyframes for the animation to determine the timing.
This was my first time animating lip-sync, and also the first time I’m doing it in a language I am not familiar with. I got to animate an audio that my partner recorded in Hindi. I’ve never studied the language so it was initially hard for me to map out what my partner was saying.
What helped the most was the script that my partner had sent me so I could slowly decipher how the mouth moves in relation to the audio. After several tries and also continuously referring to the lip-sync guide from the lectures, I tried mapping out the mouth movements as the character in my animation moves.
- Vine
I used Liza Koshy’s vine as a reference where she says “I can’t wait to meet my perfect match, you know what I mean?”.
Using the match as an idea, I created a character that has bombs as pigtails and also a fuse at the bottom.
I ended up editing the audio to add a pause in between “match” and “you”, and also slowed the audio down by 15%, which was the maximum amount I could slow it down to before it sounded monstrous.
Before starting the animation, I wanted to further deepen my understanding on determining the mouth movements for lip-sync. I broke down the audio and made a practice sheet to familiarise myself with the exercise.
I made the reference half body but initially made key frames of the character standing up.
However, since the pace of the audio was relatively fast, I realised that dynamic full-body movements greatly took away the focus from the lip-sync. I was also steering away from my reference which made it hard to adjust the animation. After trying to animate this and figuring out that it doesn’t work well, I changed the angle to half-body, and sketched the character’s movements to match my acting reference and complement the audio better.
Surprisingly, this lip-sync exercise was not less challenging than the one I did with my partner in a language I’m not familiar with. I realized how breaking down the words really help even with a language I’m familiar with.