Lip Sync

As one of the final tasks for our module we where told to create a lip synced and animated scene. We were told to create whatever we wanted, so i got to work finding clips from films that i wanted to use in the animation. I narrowed it down to three different clips one from Star Wars, one from Nacho Libre and One from Alice in Wonderland. In the end i decided on a scene between the Cheshire cat and Alice from the Disney animation. I choose this because it enabled me to animate two completely different contrasting characters. Alice would be relatively normal, where as the Cat character would be crazy and disjointed. This would allow for some very interesting animations.

Above is the reference clip that i used. I started by cutting the clip to the right length for the sound and then i put it into maya with max ready to start. I listened to the sound clip looking at which frames words where spoken in from the sound. I blocked out the speaking by moving the mouths of my characters up and down at the appropriate times as a rough guide.

From this i created a dope sheet, writing the pronounciations that maxs mouth would have to take at what word. I used this to created the correct movements of the mouth for the prenounciation of the words. These saved me alot of time!

Once i had finished the dope sheets and Lipsyncing I started to do some little sketches, mapping out where i wanted max to move whilst he was performing. These where only quick drawings with arrows showing the next stage of the animation, but it was all done to save me time when i was creating the scene.

 From these sketches i began blocking out my animation. I made a backdrop, floor and mushroom model for the scene so it would look abit better. I then placed the characters into position and blocked out the animation adding in keyframes for the end frames. The cheshire cat was based on one of my friends who moved in the same way when she mouthed the cats words to me, this was a good source of inspiration. For the Alice character, i used the actual disney clip as my reference for he animation so she moves in a very similar way.


 Once it had all been blocked it was a huge challenge making the flow of the animation smoother. It took me a long time to make it like the characters were not robots. This is probably the biggest challenge for an animater. The cat was alot simpler as his movements where often unpredicted and awkward whereas Alices had to be as fluid as possible.


Looking back at the scene, there are sections where i look and wish i had perfected sections more, this is particularly evident with Alices hands which i found a huge challenge. I think if i could do this task again i would try a different scene and just collect alot more reference and take time perfecting the scene as much as i could. Over the summer i intend to make a brand new scene and i will use all the tricks and avoid the pitfalls i have learnt doing this task. It has overall been incredibly helpful and will be the foothold for my animation knowledge when i begin creating my portfolio!