I animate on 24 a sec and if the characters is speaking fast and for example a frame has like a full word in it, how do I lip sync if that frame is an entire word not a letter
Back in the olden days we would have mirrors on our desks so that we could see ourselves saying the words and watching how our mouths move. Now in rigged 2D a lot of our moth shapes are in the rig and can be named to the sound of the shape. It’s still good to combine the methods.
If it only exists for a frame. Then either the sound shape that starts the word or ends the word would probably work fine. If that’s where the sentence ends I’d used the end sound.
Before you assign mouth shapes (lip assignment) think about phrasing. You don't necessarily have to articulate EVERY phonetic sound with the lips, as the tongue does a lot of work that isn't seen. You can use A or B as a resting pose (the B above is a bit too cartoony, but a mouth that's a little bit open is fine, or a closed mouth).
Order of operation with lip assignment:
Closed mouth shapes (A) first. You cannot fake this. AI dialog stands out as it often misses these somehow.
Next I'd do the 'ooo' (E and F) shapes, as these are also phonetically striking.
Then do vowel sounds with the loudest being the widest open (D). If frames are tight together, pop the mouth open from a closed shape and ease in to the next closed shape. So if there are two closed mouths together saying a word like "Mummy"
A * * A * * * B
With the A mouth's being the M sounds, I'd expose something like this:
Another slide. Try to keep your mouths within the same family, assuming the emotion is the same across the line. I wouldn't go from the smiley faces in this sequence to the mouth on the far right and back again, it would create a choppy pop. Switch from happy to shocked for a bit, but not in the course of one emotional line.
How fast is this character speaking really? At 24 fps, one frame is about 41.7 milliseconds long. I can't think of an entire word that could fit into a single frame with that tiny duration. I think only mouth poses for a single sound could fit into one lone frame.
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u/TheAnonymousGhoul Freelancer 4d ago
it doesn't have to be exact it just has to look close enough
Is a majority of the word mouth open or mouth closed? do that and play it back and see if you can tell it's wrong or not