The Animated Self Animation Development: Animating Speech

Wow, animating speech is hard, very hard. I knew there was no way to get around it, and upon developing this bit of animation, Oscar brought it to my attention that I was the first person in the class to actually animate speech. While I thought that was pretty cool, it was also quite intimidating. I wondered why no one else had attempted it before, perhaps it is too difficult? Like animating a waterfall? Anyway the way I went about animating speech was to watch the footage I recorded back again and again. While filming my own footage for reference was incredibly useful for my own development process. When Oscar talks, because I told him to have little emotion in his face, he hardly opens his mouth so it is very hard to see how his mouth changes with every sound.

Since this footage alone was not enough for me to figure out to animate talking, I had to simulate mouth movements myself and get various other people near me to act out mouth movements. For example, when Oscar says the word 'Lines' I got James to act out the 'l' mouth movement and then I observed that when someone makes that movement the tip of their tongue touches the roof of their mouth against their teeth.

When I played back the footage, I was nervous, as always when I play back footage theirs that uneasy gamble feeling of having no idea what footage is going to look like until I play it back. But, I could relax since, considering it looked good and the sound matched what was on screen. I mean, it could have been tidied up a bit, but the feedback I received was very positive with viewers considering it to look good considering it was practically my first time animating speech.