Term 4 Week 8: Animating Dialogue

Jason Schleifer from Dreamworks Animation gave us an awesome lecture on how to animate lip sync to dialogue. He breaks the process down to simplify things.
1. You write out the dialogue
2. You listen to it over and over
3. You simplify the words to the phonetics of actually how the character says the words. What they sound like.
4. Write the phrasing - (which words are said all as one)

He then taught us which sounds are made using lips and which sounds are produced elsewhere in the mouth. From here we can decide which shapes to make for the character. In blocking you simply drag and drop your pre-made shapes onto the timeline according the dialogue and which sounds you've chosen. It's a good idea to use copy-pairs method to hold certain shapes. After blocking we refine it by softening the jaw and mouth corners. Then we add the tongue on sounds like LL and TT and NN etc. Next week look at the relationship of the lips and the jaw so that we can get a some drag and follow through with the lip and make it look like it has a little weight to it. Finally we finesse the arcs of the mouth corners.

Here's my blocking plus: